American Philosopher Quotes

Can human beings change? The humor, and the sadness, of remarriage comedies can be said to result from the fact that we have no good answer to that question.

Rationalism, which is the feeling that everything is subject to and completely explicable by Reason, consequently rejects everything not visible and calculable.

The fundamental idea of modern capitalism is not the right of the individual to possess and enjoy what he has earned, but the ;thesis that the exercise of this right redounds to the general good.

Science aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story of what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true.

Libertarians are often baffled at how those who appear so sensitive to constraints on choice, and to differences in bargaining power, when these derive from market factors, become so amazingly oblivious to the constraint on choice, and differential bargaining power, represented by the armed might of the state, empowered to enforce its demands by legalized violence.

The discovery that the universe has no purpose need not prevent a human
being from having one.

No new choices are introduced by raising the specter of disaster. These become opportunities for swearing new allegiance to technology. The solution is to discover new technologies that will correct and modify the harm either potentially or already caused by present technologies.

For most of the history of the American empire, government has been a tool for preserving and furthering the power and might of white male corporate elites...

Cornel West
Cornel West
I'm a student of contemporary culture. Not only do I like shopping malls, but I love to pick up fundamentalist preachers on the radio. It tells me so much about society and about people — what they're thinking."

To say that mathematics in general has been reduced to logic hints at some new firming up of mathematics at its foundations. This is misleading. Set theory is less settled and more conjectural than the classical mathematical superstructure than can be founded upon it.

Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
If what I want when I drink fine wine is information about its chemical properties, why don't I just read the label?

Sexuality throws no light upon love, but only through love can we learn to understand sexuality.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people.

Rebecca Goldstein
Rebecca Goldstein
It seems to me that philosophers should be more relaxed about whether or not some form of materialism is true.

Observation and experiment, without a rational hypothesis, is like a man groping at objects at random with his eyes shut.

Henry Philip Tappan
Henry Philip Tappan
Guts are important. Your guts are what digest things. But it is your brains that tell you which things to swallow and which not to swallow.

We are scientific people and we want our students to feel the enthusiasm and promise of the scientific method. We want them to feel the moral quality of exact technique, as exact as the subject matter permits. We want them to feel that science is a spiritual experience.

Next to the word 'Nature,' 'the Great Chain of Being' was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century, playing a part somewhat analogous to that of the blessed word 'evolution' in the late nineteenth.

There is no such thing as the probability of four aces in one hand, or the probability of anything else. Given all the relevant data which there are to be known, everything is either certainly true or certainly false.

Scholars may quote Plato in studies, but the hearts of millions shall quote the Bible at their daily toil, and draw strength from its inspiration, as the meadows draw it from the brook.

Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of 'progress,' but only by viewing history as a neurosis.

The principal way that cognitive science can contribute to epistemology, I claim, is to identify basic belief-forming, or problem-solving processes. Once identified, these processes would be examined by primary epistemology according to the evaluative dimensions and standards adduced in Part I.

The secret of all true persuasion is to induce the person to persuade himself.

Reason is the power or capacity whereby we see or detect logical relationships among propositions.

Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Plantinga
We must only learn that independence cannot be gained by a rebellion against the constitution of the universe, or by inverting the laws of life and evolution, but by comprehending them and adapting ourselves to the world in which we live.

Paul Carus
Paul Carus