“In a strict usage the same symbol should never represent the act of sincerely asserting something and the content of what is asserted. For the symbolic distinction between the two, Frege has introduced the 'signpost' symbol. … \vdash p is to signify the actual assertion of p, while the bare symbol p must henceforth be used only as part of a sentence. … It should be clear from the modality of a sentence whether it is a question, a command, an invective, a complaint or an allegation of fact.”
Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 27
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Michael Polanyi 15
Hungarian-British polymath 1891–1976Related quotes
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984, p. 140) http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984)
Source: Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (1989), p. 21

But generally the positivistic scheme taken from mathematical logic is too narrow in a description of nature which necessarily uses words and concepts that are only vaguely defined.
Physics and Philosophy (1958)
"Language Log" blog, Language Log, If P, so why not Q http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001314.html, 5 August 2004.

Source: Spirit and Reality (1946), p. 52
Context: Spirit, like flame, like freedom, like creativeness, is opposed to any social stagnation or any lifeless tradition. In terms of Kantian philosophy — terms which I consider erroneous and confusing — spirit appears as a thing in itself and objectification as a phenomenon. Another and truer definition would be, spirit is freedom and objectification is nature (not in the romantic sense). Objectification has two aspects: on the one hand it denotes the fallen, divided and servile world, in which the existential subjects, the personalities, are materialized. On the other it comprehends the agency of the personal subject, of spirit tending to reinforce ties and communications in this fallen world. Hence objectification is related to the problem of culture, and in this consists the whole complexity of the problem.
In objectification there are no primal realities, but only symbols. The objective spirit is merely a symbolism of spirit. Spirit is realistic while cultural and social life are symbolical. In the object there is never any reality, but only the symbol of reality. The subject alone always has reality. Therefore in objectification and in its product, the objective spirit, there can be no sacred reality, but only its symbolism. In the objective history of the world nothing transpires but a conventional symbolism; the idea of sacredness is peculiar to the existential world, to existential subjects. The real depths of spirit are apprehensible only existentially in the personal experience of destiny, in its suffering, nostalgia, love, creation, freedom and death.