W. V. O. Quine Quotes
Willard Van Orman Quine was a 20th-century American philosopher and logician, one of the most influential analytic philosophers of the post-war era. His landmark 1951 essay Two Dogmas of Empiricism rejected the analytic-synthetic distinction and the doctrine of reductionism, both central to logical positivism, and argued for a holistic conception of knowledge in which our beliefs face experience only as a corporate body. The quotes below are attributed to W. V. O. Quine, organized by topic.
Browse W. V. O. Quine by topic
W. V. O. Quine on Death
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“Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.”
1960s | "Natural Kinds", in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969), p. 126; originally written for a festschrift for Carl Gustav Hempel , this appears in a context explaining why induction tends to wo
W. V. O. Quine on God
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“Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth .”
1980s and later | Response to being quoted William Shakespeare 's statement from Hamlet : "There are more things in heaven and earth… than are dreamt of in your philosophy." As quoted in When God is Gone Everything I
W. V. O. Quine on Knowledge
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“To be is to be the value of a variable.”
On What There Is -
Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“No entity without identity.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Philosophy of science is philosophy enough.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Logic is an old subject, and since 1879 it has been a great one.”
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“Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard ; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor .”
On What There Is -
“On What There Is", p. 4. a humorous comment on the idea "unactualized possible".”
Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes. -
“Two dogmas of Empiricism”
Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to -
“The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.”
Two dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26 -
“Two dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26”
The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings. -
“Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.”
Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26 -
“Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26”
Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space. -
“No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.”
Two Dogmas of Empiricism -
“Two Dogmas of Empiricism”
No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.
W. V. O. Quine on Life
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“Life is agid. Life is fulgid. Life is a burgeoning, a quickening of the dim primordial urge in the murky wastes of time. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of.”
1980s and later | Quine's response in 1988 when asked his philosophy of life. (He invented the word "agid".) It makes up the entire Chapter 54 in Quine in Dialogue (2008).
W. V. O. Quine on Nature
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“Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes.”
On What There Is", p. 4. a humorous comment on the idea "unactualized possible".
W. V. O. Quine on Truth
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system.”
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Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:
“Translation is indeterminate.”
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“At root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data, skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth. Admittedly, ingenuity can help too.”
The Web of Belief(1970) | S.4 -
“"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation " yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.”
1970s | Quine's paradox , in "The Ways of Paradox" in "The Ways of Paradox and other Essays" (1976) -
“Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.”
1970s | Philosophy of Logic (1970)