Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it. - Willard Van Orman Quine

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Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.

Willard Van Orman Quine

Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.

Common, Common Sense, Extension, Science, Substitute, Substitutes

Same Author Quotes

The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.

Music, Norm, Order, Play, Poor, String

Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic definition of truth is doomed to failure equally.

Equally, Science, Truth, Unique, Way

Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference.

Cranks, Heaven, Sages, Science, Sheep

To call a posit a posit is not to patronize it. A posit can be unavoidable except at the cost of other no less artificial expedients. Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built.

Artificial, Building, Concede, Cost, Real, Theory

If pressed to supplement Tweedledee's ostensive definition of logic with a discursive definition of the same subject, I would say that logic is the systematic study of the logical truths. Pressed further, I would say that a sentence is logically true if all sentences with its grammatical structure are true. Pressed further still, I would say to read this book.

Book, Definitions, Pressed, Read, Systematic

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When design springs from an understanding of the people who are going to use a product, you begin to see forms that you would never have imagined.

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Murray Rothbard

Placing the state in charge of moral principles is equivalent to putting the proverbial fox in charge of the chicken coop.

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Douglas Adams

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, " This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in; fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well! It must have been made to have me in it!

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Ray Bradbury

Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.

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Jorge Luis Borges

Air, Countless, Men, Precisely, Present, Sea