Percy W. Bridgman Quotes

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

People need meanings to everything. People want you to intellectualize every choice you make.

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.

The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance.

I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.

It's not finding what's lost, it's understanding what you've found.

I think the purpose of deconstruction is to take something apart and see how it works. If you're not going to put it back together again and watch it go, what's the point?

Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.

The meaning lies in the appropriation.

In every object there is inexhaustible meaning.

People will be able to judge for themselves.

We may be able to tell how many stars are in the Milky Way; we may be able to count the petals of every flower, and number the bones of every bird; but unless faith leads us to a deeper understanding, a more reverent comprehension of the significance of the universe, God can be no more pleased with our knowledge than the painter is pleased with the fly which touches his picture with its feelers, and sips the varnish from the surface, and dies without dreaming of the meaning, thought, feeling, embodied in the colors.

Everything I think in life is about context and intention.

True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable.

One should never mistake pattern for meaning.

Problems are messages.

We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.

What we do not understand we have no right to judge

Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.

The problem for us is less to discover the way it really is than to see the meaning of the way.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged.

One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions.

Context is to data what water is to a dolphin

You must find your treasure in order to make sense of everything you discovered on the path.