Richard Rorty - Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989)

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The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.

Richard Rorty
To abjure the notion of the truly human is to abjure the attempt to divinize the self as a replacement for a divinized world.

Richard Rorty
To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that languages are human creations. The suggestion that truth is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language his own.

Richard Rorty
The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.

Richard Rorty
Openmindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.

Richard Rorty
The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.

Richard Rorty
A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well is the chief instrument of cultural change,

Richard Rorty
Truth is a property of sentences, since sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths.

Richard Rorty