In this talk I will address two questions: 

- What is the epistemic force of declarative utterances?
- What are the principles governing the choice of epistemic verbs, in 
  particular, what distinguishes `know' from `believe' in this respect?

Both questions will be answered in a simple bi-modal logic which 
still allows many properties to be added. Also, both answers will be
related to Grice's maxims, which thus serve as a unifying but as yet
imprecise background theory of linguistic pragmatics.

The answer to the first question is similar to a proposal by Wolfgang 
Lenzen, but arrived at by a different route. The answer to the second 
question has interesting implications for the `logical omniscience' 
problem (i.e. the problem that normal modal logics force agents to 
know or believe `too much', e.g. to know all tautologies and 
consequences of their beliefs). Finally, I will relate and contrast 
the two proposals to existing literature.