It is… easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
Topics: Death
All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
Topics: Evolution
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
We, one and all of us, have an instinct to pray, and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
Topics: Prayer
Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics. Every other science, even logic, especially in its early stages, is in danger of evaporating into airy nothingness, degenerating, as the Germans say, into an arachnoid film, spun from the stuff that dreams are made of. There is no such danger for pure mathematics; for that is precisely what mathematics ought to be.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
Topics: Ethics
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.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
Topics: Instincts, Reason
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.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
Topics: Science, Intelligence
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.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
Topics: Acceptance, Secrets of Success
Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
Topics: Observation
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Hilary Putnam American Philosopher
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz German Philosopher, Mathematician
Bertrand A. Russell British Philosopher, Mathematician
Robert Anton Wilson American Polymath
Thales of Miletus Greek Philosopher, Mathematician
Ludwig Wittgenstein Austrian-born British Philosopher
Jacques Derrida French Philosopher, Literary Theorist
John Dewey American Philosopher
Aristotle Ancient Greek Philosopher
William James American Philosopher