Quine, Willard Van Orman

"Conceptual schemes are human products serving human purposes."

"Truth is what survives sustained rational inquiry."

"We navigate by adjusting our entire belief system, not piecemeal."

"Meaning emerges from the role of expressions in our language games."

"Observation sentences are the bridge between language and world."

"No fact is independent of interpretation."

"The quest for final answers often blinds us to real understanding."

"Identity is not absolute but relative to a conceptual scheme."

"Our theories underdetermine reality; multiple explanations succeed."

"Language learning is fundamentally a matter of stimulus and response."

"The analytic is not carved at nature's joints."

"We inhabit a web of mutually supporting beliefs."

"Translation reveals the plasticity of meaning."

"Certainty is unattainable; coherence is our best guide."

"Reality is not independent of our conceptual framework."

"The mind projects patterns that experience does not supply."

"Ontology is relative to a choice of language."

"Science is a self-correcting enterprise driven by pragmatic success."

"Language mediates our relationship to the world."

"Synonymy is a myth; all expressions are subtly distinct."

"We cannot escape the human perspective on the world."

"Rationality is about fitting beliefs together coherently."

"The structure of thought reflects the structure of language."

"Indeterminacy penetrates meaning at its root."

"We construct reality through our schemes of interpretation."

"Truth is internal to our system of beliefs."

"Experience underdetermines interpretation at every level."

"The pursuit of clarity must respect the limits of language."

"Identity without difference is conceptually empty."

"Our best theories are those that maximize coherence and simplicity."