Austin, John Langshaw

"The question of the sense of life is the deepest of all questions."

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

"Logic is the scaffold with which we build our understanding."

"The world is the totality of facts, not of things."

"Human language games constitute the foundation of all thought."

"Understanding a language means being able to do something with it."

"The value of philosophy is in its power to rid us of confusion."

"What can be shown cannot be said."

"All philosophy is critique of language."

"We live by customs and conventions that shape our very thoughts."

"The confusion in our thoughts is a confusion about the logical form of language."

"Words have no essence; their meaning is determined by use."

"The miracle of language is not that it represents reality, but that it creates forms of life."

"To understand a word, we must understand the practice in which it functions."

"Philosophy is descriptive, not prescriptive; we describe language games as they are played."

"The solution to philosophical problems is not to arrive at new facts but to arrange what we know."

"Family resemblance is the principle by which categories hold together without essence."

"Do not seek the meaning, seek the use."

"Language is a labyrinth of paths; we must find our way through it carefully."

"The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is."

"We speak of knowing a language as we speak of knowing a person."

"The task of philosophy is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar."

"In philosophy, we must think deeply about what seems simple."

"Agreement in definitions is not what grounds agreement in language."

"The beetle in the box is irrelevant; what matters is the language game."

"Rules do not determine their own application; practice does."

"Following a rule is something that must be learned and practiced."

"The most profound truths are often the simplest; we overcomplicate them."

"Language mirrors the structure of human life and experience."

"Every question we ask shapes the answers we receive."