Willard van Orman Quine Quotes

67 Sourced Quotes

Life is agid, life is fulgid. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of. Life is a burgeoning, a quickening of the dim primordial urge in the murky wastes of time.

Willard van Orman Quine
Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as are the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference.

Willard van Orman Quine
We cannot stem linguistic change, but we can drag our feet. If each of us were to defy Alexander Pope and be the last to lay the old aside, it might not be a better world, but it would be a lovelier language.

Willard van Orman Quine
If pressed to supplement Tweedledee's ostensive definition of logic with a discursive definition of the same subject, I would say that logic is the systematic study of the logical truths. Pressed further, I would say that a sentence is logically true if all sentences with its grammatical structure are true. Pressed further still, I would say to read this book.

Willard van Orman Quine
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

Willard van Orman Quine
Entification begins at arm's length; the points of condensation in the primordial conceptual scheme are things glimpsed, not glimpses.

Willard van Orman Quine
One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.

Willard van Orman Quine