I almost think we're all of us Ghosts, Pastor Manders. It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that "walks..." in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, with...out knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Wizard: I mean, we're all fucked, more or less, you know? Travis Bickle: I don't know, that's about the dumbest thing I e...ver heard. The Wizard: It's not Bertrand Russell, but what do you want, I'm a cabbie, you know? What do I know?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
screenwriter Tony Pastor, the pioneer of vaudeville, played the theater in 1876.... He had been preceded by P.T. Barnum, and ...an occasional performer such as Professor Simmons, "Great, Weird, Wondrous, and Invincibly Incomprehensible ... Basiliconthamaturgist."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As against Russell, I shall say this. Meaning (in at least one important sense) is a function of the sentence or expression; menti...oning and referring and truth or falsity, are functions of the use of the sentence or expression. To give the meaning of a sentence (in the sense in which I am using the word) is to give general directions for its use to refer to or mention particular objects or persons; to give the meaning of a sentence is to give general directions for its use in making true or false assertions.... The meaning of an expression cannot be identified with the object it is used, on a particular occasion, to refer to. The meaning of a sentence cannot be identified with the assertion it is used, on a particular occasion, to make.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing t...hat the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't want to shoot any Englishmen. I never saw one 'til I came up here. But I suppose most of them never saw a German 'til they... came up here.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »