Willard Van Orman Quine Quotes

Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.

~ Willard Van Orman Quine

Believing is a disposition. We could tire ourselves out thinking, if we put our minds to it, but believing takes no toll.

~ Willard Van Orman Quine

Language is a social art.

~ Willard Van Orman Quine

As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. 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.

~ Willard Van Orman Quine

Beneath the uniformity that unites us in communication there is a chaotic personal diversity of connections, and, for each of us, the connections continue to evolve. No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives.

~ Willard Van Orman Quine

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

~ Willard Van Orman Quine

To be is to be the value of a variable.

~ Willard Van Orman Quine

Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.

~ Willard Van Orman Quine