Quote by Quentin Skinner

"The meaning of a speech act depends not just on what is said but on what the speaker is doing with those words in that particular context."

Quentin Skinner
Historian Philosopher British Born 1940 (age 86)

More from Quentin Skinner

"The past is not dead; it is not even past."
"Ideas have consequences, and the historian's task is to trace them."
"We must understand the languages in which the past speaks to us."
"The study of history is the study of human possibility."

All quotes by Quentin Skinner