Quotes by Willard Quine

• We do not learn first what to talk about and then what to say about it.
• Physics investigates the essential nature of the world, and biology describes a local bump. Psychology, human psychology, describes a bump on the bump.
• 'Ouch' is not independent of social training. One has only to prick a foreigner to appreciate that it is an English word.
• To be is to be the value of a variable.
• Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.
• Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.
• It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.
• Language is a social art.
• Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.
• Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.
• The familiar material objects may not be all that is real, but they are admirable examples.
• One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.