Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

If we trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how it repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, it will lead us farther than at first, perhaps, we should have imagined.

What is an idea made of? Of future, past and also meanwhile.

A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.

What interests me about thoughts is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas but its earlier stages.

The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.

Every action is an idea before it is an action, and perhaps a feeling before it is an idea, and every idea rests upon other ideas that have preceded it in time.

A sensation must have fallen very low to deign to turn into an idea.

A CAUSE is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.

We think in language. The quality of our thoughts and ideas can only be as good as the quality of our language.

Often when works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one takes a rest, long or short, and sits down anew to the work. During the first half-hour, as before, nothing is found, and then all of a sudden the decisive idea presents itself to the mind.

You, and you alone, decide what something means to you. Yet this is a decision that most people make based upon past feelings, experiences, understandings, or future fears. None of this has anything to do with what is going on right here, right now.

Third, consider the insistency of an idea. The insistency of a past idea with reference to the present is a quantity which is less, the further back that past idea is, and rises to infinity as the past idea is brought up into coincidence with the present.

Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner space and the inner time of ideas and feelings.

Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it.

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible.

In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas — no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.

God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism.

When you are grounded in the present - feeling your feelings, listening to your body, tasting your food, and expressing your ideas - you do not build up toxicity. You digest your experience as you go.

Any material form, or thought, or feeling, past or present, should be regarded as, 'This is not mine, this is not what I am, this is not my self.'

Education is that human process of feeling your body mature, feeding your mind with ideas that it never had before, or information you never had. You simply cannot do that on a computer.

The importance of language in gaining knowledge is doubtless the chief cause of the common notion that knowledge may be passed directly from one to another. It almost seems as if all we have to do to convey an idea into the mind of another is to convey a sound into his ear. Thus imparting knowledge gets assimilated to a purely physical process.

The book says we may be through with the past but the past ain't through with us.

When I am convinced of any principle, it is only an idea which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence.

I am never free of the past. I have made it crystal clear that I believe the past is part of the present which becomes part of the future.