Charles Sanders Peirce quotes - page 4

All the progress we have made in philosophy ... is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom. (Charles Sanders Peirce)
A hypothesis is something which looks as if it might be true and were true, and which is capable of verification or refutation by comparison with facts. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics; but experience shows that these men beyond all others are held in an iron vice of metaphysical theory, because by theories that they have never called in question. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
It is a common observation that a science first begins to be exact when it is quantitatively treated. What are called the exact sciences are no others than the mathematical ones. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
If liberty of speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, the uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
The consciousness of a general idea has a certain "unity of the ego" in it, which is identical when it passes from one mind to another. It is, therefore, quite analogous to a person, and indeed, a person is only a particular kind of general idea. (Charles Sanders Peirce)
The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of events however we may vary the particular circumstances which precede the event. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
Every work of science great enough to be well remembered for a few generations affords some exemplification of the defective state of the art of reasoning of the time when it was written; and each chief step in science has been a lesson in logic. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
Of the fifty or hundred systems of philosophy that have been advanced at different times of the world's history, perhaps the larger number have been, not so much results of historical evolution, as happy thoughts which have accidently occurred to their authors. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
The only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution. This supposes them not to be absolute, not to be obeyed precisely. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
But you will mark the limitation of my approval of Ockham's razor. It is a sound maxim of scientific procedure. If the question be what one ought to believe, the logic of the situation must take other factors into account. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
The third Universe comprises everything whose being consists in active power to establish connections between different objects, especially between objects in different Universes. Such is everything which is essentially a Sign. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read - and they have been many, big, and heavy - I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience. She says, :Open your mouth and shut your eyes :And I'll give you something to make you wise; and thereupon she keeps her promise, and seems to take her pay in the fun of tormenting us. (Charles Sanders Peirce)
A philosophy which emphasises the idea of the One, is generally a dualistic philosophy in which the conception of Second receives exaggerated attention: for this One (though of course involving the idea of First) is always the other of a manifold which is not one. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
The first character of a general idea so resulting is that it is living feeling. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
The one primary and fundamental law of mental action consists in a tendency to generalisation. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
To "postulate" a proposition is no more than to hope it is true. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce