Physics investigates the essential nature of the world, and biology describes a local bump. Psychology, human psychology, describes a bump on the bump.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Nature, World, Psychology, Biology
The familiar material objects may not be all that is real, but they are admirable examples.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
May, Examples, Material, Admirable
Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Sin, Original, Sign, Confusion
To be is to be the value of a variable.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Value, Brainy, Variable
Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Meaning, Reference, Essence, Divorced
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.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
How, Hinge, Does, Dispense
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.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Change, Which, Languages, Switch
Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Science, Sin, Conceived, Redemption
One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Fancy, Flight, Observation, Closed
We do not learn first what to talk about and then what to say about it.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Learn, Say, About, Talk
'Ouch' is not independent of social training. One has only to prick a foreigner to appreciate that it is an English word.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Appreciate, Independent, English
Language is a social art.
- Willard Van Orman Quine
Art, Language, Social
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