The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifyability. We say that a... sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express--that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as true, or reject it as being false.... To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Long ago I added to the true old adage of "What is everybody's business is nobody's business," another clause which, I think, more... than any other principle has served to influence my actions in life. That is, What is nobody's business is my business.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The secret affinity between gambling and the desert: the intensity of gambling reinforced by the presence of the desert all around... the town. The air-conditioned freshness of the gaming rooms, as against the radiant heat outside. The challenge of all the artificial lights to the violence of the sun's rays. Night of gambling sunlit on all sides; the glittering darkness of these rooms in the middle of the desert. Gambling itself is a desert form, inhuman, uncultured, initiatory, a challenge to the natural economy of value, a crazed activity on the fringes of exchange. But it too has a strict limit and stops abruptly; its boundaries are exact, its passion knows no confusion. Neither the desert nor gambling are open areas; their spaces are finite and concentric, increasing in intensity toward the interior, toward a central point, be it the spirit of gambling or the heart of the desert--a privileged, immemorial space, where things lose their shadow, where money loses its value, and where the extreme rarity of traces of what signals to us there leads men to seek the instantaneity of wealth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well, the wedding is over, the good folks are joined for better for worse--a shocking clause that!--'tis preparing one to lead a l...ong journey, and to know the path is not altogether strewed with roses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double sign...ificance.... In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he... cannot quite bury under the Finite.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of... a finite set of elements. All natural languages in their spoken or written form are languages in this sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some monied corpo...ration, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody. But through every clause and part of speech of the right book I meet the eyes of the most determined men; his force and terror inundate every word: the commas and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble,--can go far and live long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »