Quote

The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief weare inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Sanders Peirce
Age: 74 †
Born: 1839
Born: September 10
Died: 1914
Died: April 19
Geodesist
Linguist
Logician
Mathematician
Philosopher
Pragmatist
Statistician
University Teacher
Phillips Place
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Charles Peirce
Charles S. Peirce
Charles Sanders Santiago Peirce
CSP
Certain
Method
Pleasing
Believe
Comfortable
Adopt
Men
Belief
Awakened
Whatever
Flattery
Process
Distinguished
Flatteries
Facts
Rough
Priori
Nature
Vanity
Conclusions
Dream
Conclusion
Inclined

More quotes by Charles Sanders Peirce

Image
Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
A true proposition is a proposition belief which would never lead to such disappointment so long as the proposition is not understood otherwise than it was intended.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
We cannot begin with complete doubt.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus theoretically, is to uselanguage in a Pickwickian sense. In practice, and in fact, mathematics is not exempt from that liability to error that affects everything that man does.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
We, one and all of us, have an instinct to pray and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which hs to be acquired with difficulty.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics but experience shows that these men beyond all others are held in an iron vice of metaphysical theory, because by theories that they have never called in question.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
Whenever a man acts purposively, he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies makes up its entire bearing upon human conduct.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
We shall do better to abandon the whole attempt to learn the truthunless we can trust to the human mind's having such a powerof guessing right that before very many hypotheses shall have been tried, intelligent guessing may be expected to lead us to one which will support all tests, leaving the vast majority of possible hypotheses unexamined.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Image
It is a common observation that those who dwell continually upon their expectations are apt to become oblivious to the requirements of their actual situation.
Charles Sanders Peirce