School

Analytic Philosophy quotes

Analytic philosophy emphasizes argumentative clarity, logical analysis, and careful attention to language—without reducing to a single doctrine.

Overview

From early logic and ordinary-language debates to ethics of intention and virtue (Anscombe, Foot) and philosophy of language (Wittgenstein), analytic work in this archive favors precise distinctions over rhetorical flourish.

Historical notes

Twentieth-century analytic philosophy grows from Frege, Russell, Moore, and the Vienna Circle into postwar Oxford and contemporary ethics, mind, and language.

Core ideas

  • Clarify concepts before building systems.
  • Language and logic shape what can be said truly.
  • Moral philosophy can be rigorous without ignoring practice.
  • Intention and action repay careful description.

Thinkers in this archive

Ludwig Wittgenstein , Bertrand Russell , Elizabeth Anscombe , Philippa Foot

FAQ

What is analytic philosophy?

It is a family of approaches valuing clarity, argument, and analysis of language and concepts—especially in the English-speaking tradition.

Is analytic philosophy only about language?

No. Language is a method and topic, but analytic work also covers mind, ethics, metaphysics, and science.

Where can I find analytic philosophy quotes?

See the English passages below and thinker pages linked from this school hub.

  1. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
  2. My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical…He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
  3. What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.
  4. The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions…be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
  5. To abandon the struggle for private happiness…to burn with passion for eternal things — this is emancipation.
  6. Next to worry, probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
  7. Envy is itself a terrible obstacle to happiness.
  8. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
  9. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
  10. We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.
  11. The meaning of a word is its use in the language.
  12. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.
  13. Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
  14. The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
  15. Don’t think, but look!
  16. My propositions serve as elucidations in this way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical.
  17. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy… can still do.
  18. The most ordinary things escape notice precisely because they are ordinary.
  19. The concepts of obligation, and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of "ought," ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible.
  20. It would be a great improvement if, instead of "morally wrong," one always named a genus such as "untruthful," "unchaste," "unjust."
  21. What distinguishes actions which are intentional from those which are not? The answer that I shall suggest is that they are the actions to which a certain sense of the question "Why?" is given application.
  22. Intentional action is action with a certain description under which it is intentional.
  23. The greater part of modern moral philosophy derives from Sidgwick and is utilitarian or consequentialist.
  24. Moral evil is a kind of natural defect.
  25. Virtues are in general beneficial characteristics, and indeed ones that a human being needs to have, for his own sake and that of his fellows.
  26. We are not free to say that just anything is the subject of a moral belief.
  27. There is no criterion for determining what is good for a human being that is independent of the nature of the human being.
  28. We are most of us inclined to think that a great deal of damage, and even lives lost, is better than doing murder.