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.

Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.

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.

You are more than entitled not to know what the word 'performative' means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it doesnot mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favor, it is not a profound word.

The theory of truth is a series of truisms.

I begin, then, with some remarks about 'the meaning of a word.' I think many persons now see all or part of what I shall say: but not all do, and there is a tendency to forget, or to get it slightly wrong. In so far as I am merely flogging the converted, I apologize to them.

There is no one kind of thing that we 'perceive' but many different kinds, the number being reducible if at all by scientific investigation and not by philosophy: pens are in many ways though not in all ways unlike rainbows, which are in many ways though not in all ways unlike after-images, which in turn are in many ways but not in all ways unlike pictures on the cinema-screen--and so on.