Quine, Willard Van Orman

"We cannot divide our beliefs into the empirical and the analytic in any principled way."

"The mind imposes structure on experience rather than receiving it passively."

"Scientific truth is provisional truth, always open to revision by experience."

"Language allows us to transcend immediate sensation and reason about abstract matters."

"Every theory worth considering has empirical consequences that determine its truth."

"The realist must explain how our language can refer to external objects."

"Knowledge grows not by accumulation but by reconstruction of our conceptual system."

"The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography to the profoundest laws of atomic physics, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges."

"To be is to be the value of a bound variable."

"Nothing is so fundamental as the notion of meaning itself."

"The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be."

"Language is a social art which we acquire on the model of one another's overt behavior."

"Disputes over theoretical matters can often be resolved by appealing to observable phenomena."

"The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future."

"Ontology is what one's theory says there is."

"Reality is underdetermined by science; multiple theories can fit the same data."

"No statement is immune to revision in light of experience."

"The web of belief is not a pyramid with a single foundation, but a network with no fixed center."

"Meaning is not intrinsic to words but arises through use and context."

"Physical objects are conceptual conveniences for organizing our sensory experience."

"Logic itself is just one method among others for organizing thought."

"The most persistent puzzle of philosophy concerns the nature of abstract objects."

"What is not observed may be fundamentally unobservable."

"Analyticity is a matter of degree, not a sharp distinction."

"We cling to our beliefs because they form a coherent system, not because of individual certainty."

"Translation between languages is never determinate; it always involves interpretation."

"The universe could be simpler than we suppose if we revise our conceptual schemes radically enough."

"Belief revision is a pragmatic matter, not a logical necessity."

"Science progresses not by discovering absolute truth but by improving useful models."

"Our words do not carry fixed meanings across all possible worlds."