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Logic and mathematics seem to be the only domains where self-evidence manages to rise above triviality; and this it does, in those domains, by a linking of self-evidence on to self-evidence in the chain reaction known as proof.

— Willard van Orman Quine

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Mind

More quotes by Willard van Orman Quine

The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.

One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.

Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

Necessity resides in the way we talk about things, not in the things we talk about.

Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (1976)

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

Philosophy of Logic (1970)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Willard van Orman Quine (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.