Willard Van Orman Quine Quotes

Keep in mind that a language is both a map of the world and its own world, with its own shadowlands and crevasses - places where statements that seem to obey all the language's rules are nevertheless impossible to deal with.

The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The 'thing in itself' (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for.

Our medium is meat, but we are made of information.

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself — it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

language is never neutral

I still think of myself as a house. Ravan tried to fix this problem of self-image, as he called it. To teach me to phrase my communication in terms of a human body. To say: let us hold hands instead of let us hold kitchens. To say put our heads together and not put our parlors together. But it is not as simple as replacing words anymore. Ravan is gone. My hearth is broken.

If you say that you're a king, queen, god or goddess and you recognize that you're from ancestral greatness, you have to start living up to that. It's really just that simple.

There's a trick to being whatever you want to be in life. It starts with the simple belief that you are what or who you say you are.

The computer, being a mechanical moron, can handle only quantifiable data.

A name can't begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that's the magic of names, isn't it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name.

Progo,' Meg asked. 'You memorized the names of all the stars - how many are there?' How many? Great heavens, earthling. I haven't the faintest idea.' But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.' I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that's a great many.' But how many?' What difference does it make? I know their names. I don't know how many there are. It's their names that matter.

A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.

He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.

No object is stuck with its name so irrevocably that one cannot find another which suits it better.

Numbers are really fascinating things, and they do play a big part in our lives. They are a language of their own.

It scares me. But then I get this big feeling, simple but exalted: He's like me, just with different details.

You know, you’re a little complicated after all.” “Oh no,” she assured him hastily. “No, I’m not really - I’m just a - I’m just a whole lot of different simple people.

It's like you wake up one morning, and decided that how you've been in the past doesn't have to define who you are in the future. Simple as that.

I am too old to think that numbers are creating change

Who does not love his own tongue is far worse than a brute or stinking fish.

I don't know why I still find it so hard to accept that words are faulty and by their very nature innacurate

We treasure what we can measure.

There is a simple, logical explanation,' I said to myself. And because you never know who else is listening, I added, 'And there is nothing under the bed.'" --Dexter

I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understand still something else! I say: cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God...and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his own suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost. I can't stand it any longer!

In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers and data. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust.