Quine, Willard Van Orman

"Children learn language not by hypothesis testing but by gradual habituation and social training."

"The true and the good are not fixed by some eternal realm but emerge from our practices."

"Artificial intelligence and natural intelligence differ in implementation but not in principle."

"Qualia and subjective experience are best understood from the perspective of functional roles."

"Two theories that make identical empirical predictions might still differ in their ontological commitments."

"Understanding requires not just knowledge of facts but grasp of how beliefs cohere as a system."

"The attempt to found knowledge on incorrigible sense data fails because interpretation is always involved."

"Practical considerations often determine which scientific theory we should prefer."

"The boundary between observation and theory is blurred; all observations are theory-laden."

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

"Meaning is not intrinsic; it emerges from our web of beliefs and their interconnections."

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

"We cannot talk about the world without using language, and we cannot step outside language to verify our claims."

"Ontology recapitulates philosophy."

"The man-made and the natural are not really distinct categories—everything is ultimately natural."

"Translation between languages reveals the indeterminacy of meaning itself."

"Our beliefs form an interconnected network; no single belief stands alone."

"The scheme-content distinction is ultimately untenable."

"Science is our most reliable guide to reality, yet it remains underdetermined by experience."

"Posits are justified by their utility in our overall system of beliefs."

"Identity is relative to a conceptual scheme."

"We cling to our core beliefs while adjusting our peripheral ones in response to experience."

"Objects are theoretical constructs justified by their explanatory power."

"Analyticity cannot be precisely defined—it is a matter of degree."

"The boundary between semantics and metaphysics is blurred."

"All learning involves the modification of our belief system."

"What cannot be stated clearly cannot be thought clearly either."

"Empirical content is distributed throughout our entire system of beliefs."

"We should embrace indeterminacy rather than seek false precision."

"Reality is not independent of our conceptual frameworks."