Max Black Quotes

Understanding a metaphor is like deciphering a code or unraveling a riddle.

Fine doesn't mean fine! The scale goes: great, good, okay, not okay, I hate you, fine.

...a metaphor that works in one society may seem preposterous in another.

No doubt metaphors are dangerous- and perhaps especially so in philosophy. But a prohibition against their use would be a willful and harmful restriction upon our powers of inquiry.

... a result once generally accepted by mathematicians is seldom retracted, and then only with great pangs. The Nature of Mathematics