Willard Van Orman Quine Quotes

Everything I tell you is a lie." -Vergere

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

The following sentence is false. The preceding sentence is true.

To establish what is true is very difficult. Frequently it is easier to establish what is false. And, passing through the false, it's possible to understand something about truth.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.

Paradox implies that stating a contradiction disposes of it.

If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?

Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.

No generalization is wholly true—not even this one.

Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.

Nothing in this book is true.

There's truths there that spiral out of what appears to be just a word game. That's what I find mystifying about the meanings of things: they kind of unscrew themselves from the practical words.

If I can assign names as well as pictures to objects, the right assignment of them we may call truth, and the wrong assignment of them falsehood.

Obviously a drawing of a person is not a real person, but a drawing of a line is a real line.

It is not certain that everything is certain, neither is it certain that everything is uncertain.

What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?

Liars are experts in chopping logic and missing the truth slightly - 'Did God say not to eat from any tree?' In order to pin a liar down, words must be defined in the most careful manner available.

i have never pondered over questions that are not questions.

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

There is a place where Contrarieties are equally True.

Truth and falsity is something that concerns language, it's a property of language.

Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.

A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence.