In the one defense, briefly, we accept responsibility but deny that it was bad: in the other, we admit that it was bad but don't accept full, or even any, responsibility.

Ordinary language embodies the metaphysics of the Stone Age.

After all we speak of people 'taking refuge' in vagueness -the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.

Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague.

The trouble is that the expression 'material thing' is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for 'sense-datum'; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he 'perceives.

A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words.... Statements are made, words or sentences are used.

I feel ruefully sure, also, that one must be at least one sort of fool to rush in over ground so well trodden by the angels.