Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

Nature is made in such a way as to be able to be understood. Or perhaps I should put it-more correctly-the other way around, and say that we are made in such a way as to be able to understand Nature.

One of my few shortcomings is that I can't predict the future.

Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.

There's something really beautiful about science, that human beings can ask these questions and can answer them. You can make models of nature and understand how it works.

For me, any book I'm writing is also a chance to get in and research and read and learn things that I maybe only knew a little bit about before.

There is always something to upset the most careful of human calculations.

Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.

Humans are startlingly bad at detecting fraud. Even when we're on the lookout for signs of deception, studies show, our accuracy is hardly better than chance.

We can't really know ourselves because we have not created ourselves. But we can know computers, we can know cars, because anything that we made, we can understand.

Humans are powerless, and even in our exercise of free will, either the Universe is gonna get down with your plan, or it isn't.

I've been very lucky that I've interviewed so many different people.

Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.

Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?

If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.

Though I would have liked my chances in a rematch in 1998 if I were better prepared, it was clear then that computer superiority over humans in chess had always been just a matter of time.

Knowledge is boundless,--human capacity, limited.

Learned or unlearned we all must be scribbling.

Nothing in the many processes of Nature, whether she deals with men or with things, comes by chance or accident or is really at the mercy of external causes.

There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression, the admirable deed are only partly ours.

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

Never can custom conquer nature, for she is ever unconquered.

Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n.

What led me to my science and what fascinated me from a young age was the, by no means self-evident, fact that our laws of thought agree with the regularities found in the succession of impressions we receive from the external world, that it is thus possible for the human being to gain enlightenment regarding these regularities by means of pure thought

Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.

Never again will we have this good a chance as we now have to find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that keep us alive. It's a sweet spot in history. That's why this is such a critical time.