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.
Browse Richard Rorty by topic
Richard Rorty on God
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“Truthfulness under oath is, by now, a matter of our civic religion, our relation to our fellow citizens rather than our relation to a nonhuman power.”
John Searle on Realism and Relativism." Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998). -
“Contemporary intellectuals have given up the Enlightenment assumption that religion, myth, and tradition can be opposed to something ahistorical, something common to all human beings qua human.”
"The priority of democracy to philosophy"
Richard Rorty on Knowledge
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“Introduction to Consequences of Pragmatism (1982)”
On James's view, "true" resembles "good" or "rational" in being a normative notion, a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit with other sentences which are doing so. -
“My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have … "an ambition of transcendence.”
Introduction to Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume I (1991). -
“Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.”
Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998). -
“If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?”
"Richard Rorty Interviewed by Gideon Lewis-Kraus." The Believer , June 2003.
Richard Rorty on Mind
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Attributed to Richard Rorty:
“There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.”
Richard Rorty on Politics
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Attributed to Richard Rorty:
“Solidarity is created, not discovered.”
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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.”
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“When the individual finds in her conscience beliefs that are relevant to public policy but incapable of the defense on the basis of beliefs common to her fellow citizens, she must sacrifice her conscience on the altar of public expediency.”
"The priority of democracy to philosophy"
Richard Rorty on Truth
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Attributed to Richard Rorty:
“Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.”
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Attributed to Richard Rorty:
“A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.”
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Attributed to Richard Rorty:
“The world does not speak. Only we do.”
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“On James's view, "true" resembles "good" or "rational" in being a normative notion, a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit with other sentences which are doing so.”
Introduction to Consequences of Pragmatism (1982) -
“As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ”
Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
Richard Rorty on Virtue
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“As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change – that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.”
Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).