Willard Van Orman Quine

1908–2000 · American philosopher and logician

Topics: philosophy, learning

• The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.

  — 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

• Necessity resides in the way we talk about things, not in the things we talk about.

  — Willard Van Orman Quine

• Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

  — Willard Van Orman Quine

• 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.

  — Willard Van Orman Quine

• Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.

  — Willard Van Orman Quine

• Set theory in sheep's clothing.

  — Willard Van Orman Quine

• Implication is thus the very texture of our web of belief, and logic is the theory that traces it.

  — Willard Van Orman Quine