1001Philosophers

Richard Rorty Quotes

Richard Rorty was an American philosopher who began in the analytic tradition and gradually became its most celebrated internal critic. His Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature dismantled the picture of the mind as the mirror of an antecedent reality and called for a turn from epistemology to a hermeneutic and conversational understanding of human inquiry. The quotes below are attributed to Richard Rorty, organized by topic.

Richard Rorty on Mind

  • Attributed to Richard Rorty:

    “There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.”

Richard Rorty on Politics

  • Attributed to Richard Rorty:

    “Solidarity is created, not discovered.”

  • Attributed to Richard Rorty:

    “Liberalism is the hope that suffering will be diminished, that the humiliation of human beings by other human beings may cease.”

Read all Richard Rorty quotes on Politics

Richard Rorty on Truth

  • Attributed to Richard Rorty:

    “Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.”

  • Attributed to Richard Rorty:

    “A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.”

  • Attributed to Richard Rorty:

    “The world does not speak. Only we do.”

Read all Richard Rorty quotes on Truth