Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes
An American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist.
(1839 - 1914)
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.
|
|
|
|
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
|
|
|
|
Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else.
|
|
|
|
Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment.
|
|
|
|
Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing.
|
|
|
|
It is a common observation that those who dwell continually upon their expectations are apt to become oblivious to the requirements of their actual situation.
[Acceptance]
|
|
|
|
It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be.
[Science]
|
|
|
|
We should chiefly depend not upon that department of the soul which is most superficial and fallible (our reason), but upon that department that is deep and sure, which is instinct.
[Instincts]
|
|
|
|
We, one and all of us, have an instinct to pray; and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.
[Prayer]
|
|
|
|
|
|