J. L. Austin Quotes

It's so hard for me to wrap my head around the concept of truth, I don't even know what people mean by it.

Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers.

As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'

It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term "scientific truth." So different is the meaning of the word "truth" according to whether we are dealing with a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition or a scientific theory. "Religious truth" conveys nothing clear to me at all.

One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions.

All our knowledge originates in opinion.

Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind.

There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future.

Where doubt there truth is - 'tis her shadow.

Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.

Is the ground a philosophical concept? Has mind a relationship to the ground? Is it an idea to be investigated? Is the ground put together by thought?

Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.

Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.

If our minds could get hold of one abstract truth, they would be immortal so far as that truth is concerned. My trouble is to find out how we can get hold of the truth at all.

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

A philosophy can and must be worked out with the greatest rigour and discipline in the details, but can ultimately be founded on nothing but faith: and this is the reason, I suspect, why the novelties in philosophy are only in elaboration, and never in fundamentals.

You know that you know nothing. Find out that knowledge.

Analytical philosophy was very interesting. It always struck me as being very interesting and full of tremendous intellectual curiosities. It is wonderful to see the mind at work in such an intense manner, but, for me, it was still too far removed from my own issues.

'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth

Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

What is truth? I don't know and I'm sorry I brought it up.

In fact, philosophy is universal in scope. No man can live without a world view; therefore, there is no man who is not a philosopher.