Semantics Quotes

“The first and most important thing to be said about contemporary music in America is that the word 'contemporary' has no meaning.”

“The original question, 'Can machines think?' I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion.”

“Our solutions are often the problems in disguise.”

“The word is not the thing.”

“Cut the pie any way you like, 'meanings' just ain't in the head!”

“The meaning of a word is not in the head but in the world.”

“Definitions, contrary to popular opinion, tell us nothing about things. They only describe people's linguistic habits.”

“Few terms are used in popular and scientific discourse more promiscuously than 'similarity'.”

“The meaning of a word is not in the word, it is in us.”

“When we say 'my belief' we mean 'my neuro-linguistic, neuro-semantic environment'.”

“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”

“We are able to say that the word is not the thing, but we are not able to think and act on that basis.”

“The map is not the territory.”

“The first lesson of semantics is that the word is not the thing.”

“It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is.”

“I'm not an anti-semite. I'm anti-termite.”

“A 'fact' is a statement about something, not the something itself.”

“There is the National Guard, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Marines. There is no U.S. military.”