Willard Van Orman Quine Quotes

Common sense says that chairs and tables exist independently of whether anyone happens to perceive them or not.

It is not enough for theory to describe and analyze, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes.

What is reasonable is real; that which is real is reasonable.

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

I had some hesitations about philosophy because, if you worked out a philosophical theory, it was hard to know whether you were going to be able to prove it or whether other theories had just as good a claim on belief.

The world is real. Consciousness is the illusion.

Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

To me, what philosophy does best is reflect on knowledge that's generated in other areas.

Metaphysics is a science.

Einstein said, if everything exists as a substance of qualities, and qualities exist only in mind, then all is mind.

First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?

Initially, I studied philosophy, because it claimed to give you answers to the meaning of existence, but it didn't: It was basically a semantics game.

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one.

I think, therefore I am.

I always start with the assumption that everything that happens in the world is actually in the world. It sounds like an obvious thing to say, but it's a very powerful methodological premise.

'Do not touch ontologically' doesn't mean 'are separated by empirically measurable hard edges.'

The connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent.

Truth is the summit of being.

Idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.

Metaphysics,--the science which determines what can and what cannot be known of being and the laws of being.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.

Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.

Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion.