The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do… — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
There is nothing to be known about anything except an initially large, and forever expandable, web of relations to other things. Everything that can serve as a term of relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so… — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have… — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
Truth is simply a compliment paid to sentences seen to be paying their way. — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
"True" resembles... a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing… — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win… — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative. — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
“There is nothing sacred about universality which makes the shared automatically better than the unshared.” — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
I think of an intellectual as just being bookish, being interested in history books, utopian ideas, that kind of thing. — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
I illustrate with a quotation from the atheist philosopher Richard Rorty, who died recently and is, I suspect, now having a lengthy conversation with… — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
Academic disciplines are subject to being overtaken by attacks of "knowingness"- a state of mind and soul that prevents shudders of awe and makes… — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves. — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
The most important advance that the West has yet made is to develop a secularist moral tradition — Richard Rorty Copy Share Image
