Willard Van Orman Quine

"Quantification reveals the true commitments of a theory."

"Language learners face infinite possible interpretations; context alone constrains meaning."

"Observation is always theory-laden; pure empiricism is a myth."

"Philosophy aims for clarity in thought and precision in expression."

"We are prisoners of our schemes of reference, though we may shift between them."

"The rabbit is not extracted from the rabbit-stage in the sensory manifold."

"Successful prediction validates our theories more reliably than metaphysical argument."

"Epistemology stands or falls with ontology; we cannot separate them."

"Induction has no logical justification, yet we cannot live without it."

"The mind cannot escape language; to think is already to speak."

"Artificial notation often clarifies what natural language obscures."

"Truth is a property we ascribe to statements within a framework, not an absolute."

"Science progresses not by revolution but by continuous refinement of belief networks."

"We should accept only what is needed to explain experience economically."

"Contradiction is the deepest sign that something requires revision in our beliefs."

"The physical world exists independently, but our knowledge of it is forever mediated."

"Grammar reveals something about how we organize experience, not necessarily reality's structure."

"Modality belongs to language and logic, not necessarily to the world itself."

"The rational mind chooses theories that maximize explanatory power and minimize assumptions."

"Identity statements require a domain of discourse; identity is relative to conceptual schemes."

"Logic is the science of inference; validity depends on form, not content."

"Ambiguity in language often reflects genuine ambiguity in the world we describe."

"We must believe in the external world, yet we can only know it through mental mediation."

"A theory is good if it handles new cases as well as familiar ones."

"The empiricist and the rationalist seek common ground in the structure of knowledge."

"Meaning emerges from the role a word plays in a system of sentences."

"Necessity is what we find ourselves unable to deny within a given framework."

"The community of scientists corrects what isolated minds cannot see clearly."

"We inherit our culture's conceptual apparatus; revolution requires great courage and thought."

"Nothing is intrinsically a name; something is a name only relative to an interpretation."