When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
A pair of statements may be taken conjunctively or disjunctively; for example, "It lightens and it thunders ," is conjunctive, "It lightens… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
We may say that feelings have two kinds of intensity. One is the intensity of the feeling itself, by which loud sounds… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
We shall do better to abandon the whole attempt to learn the truthunless we can trust to the human mind's having such… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
If we are to define science, ... it does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in "organized knowledge," as it does in… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
One will meet, for example, the virtual assumption that what is relative to thought cannot be real. But why not, exactly? Red is relative… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share 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… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share 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… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of events however… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share 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,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share 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… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
The percept is the reality. It is not in propositional form. But the most immediate judgment concerning it is abstract. It is therefore essentially… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
