Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) by Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176
Context: What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character … We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.
“We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.”
Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
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Tom Stoppard 116
British playwright 1937Related quotes
“The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it — what is said.”
Man and Language (1966)
Context: The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it. Thus it follows that from the forgetfulness of language that its real being consists in what is said in it. What is said in it constitutes the common world in which we live. … The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it — what is said.
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
Title of poem (1942)
1940s
Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p.423
“Writing obscures language; it is not a guise for language but a disguise.”
Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 31
Scott and Scotland (1936), Introduction.
Source: Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson (1891), Ch. 22 : The Last Happy Days — Chancellorsville — 1863, p. 429
Context: We must make this campaign an exceedingly active one. Only thus can a weaker country cope with a stronger; it must make up in activity what it lacks in strength. A defensive campaign can only be made successful by taking the aggressive at the proper time. Napoleon never waited for his adversary to become fully prepared, but struck him the first blow.