Belief, Language and Experience Quotes

“The real relevance of the above observations to our inquiry into belief is the realization that words are not only complex, and also very often misleading, but that they are actually inadequate to the precise expression of our ideas. As instruments of thought they are commonly serviceable enough, but some of the handier ones have been so much battered and blunted, by being continually put to one use after another, that they are no longer fit for accurate work. The verbal concept of belief is very much in this condition, and it is not apt to the expression of those humane concerns to which it pre-eminently has been though rightly adapted. Much the same applies, also, to the words by which in English, at one or more removes, we usually explicate the notion of belief; and then again to the constantly manipulated vocabularies to which we resort when we try to analyse the psychological concepts of other traditions. Far from being able to rely on the simple and definite terms of an ideal or universal language, or on a stock of thoughts […] common to all languages, we have to conduct our comparative analyses by means of words that are likely to fail us at every point. And in seeking to translate alien concepts, moreover, we have to appreciate that the foreign words in question are themselves words that may be in the same state as our own; so when the members of a strange society try, in their own language, to explain to us the meanings of these words, they too must be assumed to be the victims of just such linguistic defects, traps, and diversions as we ourselves when we formulate our own thoughts.”
― Rodney Needham, Belief, Language and Experience