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Analytic Philosopher Inspirational Quotes (722)

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The variables of quantification, 'something,' 'nothing,' 'everything,' range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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Language is a social art.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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Implication is thus the very texture of our web of belief, and logic is the theory that traces it.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, hassome indirect systematic efficacy in the development of theory.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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Some may find comfort in reflecting that the distinction between an eliminative and an explicative physicalism is unreal.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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I have been accused of denying consciousness but I am not conscious of having done so.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. A pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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How are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies? Certainly the answer is not provided by the semantical formula To be is to be the value of a variable this formula serves rather, conversely, in testing the conformity of a given remark or doctrine to a prior ontological standard.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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The familiar material objects may not be all that is real, but they are admirable examples.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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For me the problem of induction is a problem about the world: a problem of how we, as we are now (by our present scientific lights), in a world we never made, should stand better than random, or coin-tossing chances changes of coming out right when we predict by inductions. . . .
Willard Van Orman Quine
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No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.
Bertrand Russell
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Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes.
Willard Van Orman Quine
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Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
Bertrand Russell
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A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.
Bertrand Russell
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It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
Bertrand Russell
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Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.
Bertrand Russell
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We see the world in terms of our theories.
Thomas Kuhn
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Dr. Arnold . . . the admired reformer of public schools, came across some cranks who thought it a mistake to flog boys. Anyone reading his outburst of furious indignation against this opinion will be forced to the conclusion that he enjoyed inflicting floggings.
Bertrand Russell
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And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence
Bertrand Russell
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Your writing is never as good as you hoped but never as bad as you feared.
Bertrand Russell
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Far from being magisterial in its objectivity, science was conditioned by history, society, and the prejudices of scientists.
Thomas Kuhn
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