Hilary Putnam Quotes

Feelings are not everything! There is very little absolute truth in life.

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

Maybe I don't believe things myself, as well. Truth is such a transient thing.

A belief may be larger than a fact.

I don't know if there's such a thing as objectivity.

Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

You believe in God or statistics or the way your narrative differs from other people.

There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which one can be certain.

Men are not necessarily more zealous for truth than they are for error.

Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

Truths turn into dogmas the moment they are disputed.

Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

Objectivity in the end is an unattainable ideal.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

You're entitled your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts.

If we can't agree on objective truth, then how are we ever going to agree on opinions?

There is nothing more amusing than when two people known for being non-objective argue over objectivity. This is the summation of Keith Olbermann vs. Ted Koppell.

I reject the notion of a post-truth area. I don't believe there is such a thing, and we shouldn't accept that.

A search for truth seems to me to be full of pitfalls. We all have different understandings of what truth is, and we'll each believe - or we are in danger of each believing - that our truth is the one and only absolute truth, which is why I say it's full of pitfalls.