The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality… — 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 that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
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
