Herbert Marcuse Quotes

The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it - what is said.

In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect.

It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do?

I'm interested in the way language is used to navigate the world around us.

Languages are true analytical methods.

I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language.

Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.

Ordinary language carries with it conditions of meaning which it is easy to recognize by classifying the contexts in which the expression is employed in a meaningful manner.

The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence.

I know what the structure of the language is.

Revelation and the nature of truth must be viewed in reference to the structure of language.

As Bromberger observed, rules are understood to be elements of the computational systems that determine the sound and meaning of the infinite array of expressions of a language; the information so derived is accessed by other systems in language use.

The meanings of words and the uses of words come from practice from the way people in a given culture use those words.

I think that this vein is close to being mined out already, but I'll say that my knowledge of and talent for linguistics are quite limited and I'm not aware of being a hell of a lot more interested in that topic than I am in others.

If half an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good or he is evil. (Melisandre of Asshai)

The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.

Speech is not a means in the service of an external end. It contains its own rule of usage, ethics, and view of the world, as a gesture sometimes bears the whole truth about a man.

LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.

Reason" in language - oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.

We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself.

Marriage or non-marriage, good or evil, learning or ignorance, any of these is justified, if it leads to the goal.

We have only the language for fun and miserable, and maybe we need language for deep and shallow, meaningful and meaningless.

President Numeiri of Sudan is said to have remarked of Gadaffi that he was 'a man with a split personality - both of them evil'.

If I were to give liberty to the press, my power could not last three days.

It is the soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities and decisions, that have welded the German Empire together. I put my trust in the army.