"Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers……" — Willard Van Orman Quine
"Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers ... is a convenient myth [which] simplifies the laws of arithmetic ... so physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of existence... The conceptional scheme of physical objects is [likewise] a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part."
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Willard Van Orman Quine
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28 Quotes by Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine has 28 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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To be is to be the value of a variable.
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Physics investigates the essential nature of the world, and biology describes a local bump. Psychology, human psychology, describes a bump…
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Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.
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Life is agid, life is fulgid. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least…
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It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does…
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Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation
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Logic is an old subject, and since 1879 it has been a great one.
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Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.
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No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives.
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Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praise-worthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.
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For me the problem of induction is a problem about the world: a problem of how we, as we are…
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Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and…
See all 28 quotes by Willard Van Orman Quine »
More Account Quotes
This quote is filed under Account Quotes,
one of 1,306 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but…
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A soul which gives itself to prayer, either much or little, should on no account be kept within narrow bounds.
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It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited…
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Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
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Do not measure your loss by itself; if you do, it will seem intolerable; but if you will take all…
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To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
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There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we…
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To me, it really seems visible today that ethics is not something exterior to the economy, which, as technical matter,…
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I've never had a bank account in Switzerland since 1984. Why would the Swiss do this to me? Maybe the…
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History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers,…
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Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
— Ambrose Bierce
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In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in…
— Harry A. Blackmun
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