Language is a social art.
Willard Van Orman Quine
Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.
Willard Van Orman Quine
Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.
Willard Van Orman Quine
Physics investigates the essential nature of the world, and biology describes a local bump. Psychology, human psychology, describes a bump on the bump.
Willard Van Orman Quine
'Ouch' is not independent of social training. One has only to prick a foreigner to appreciate that it is an English word.
Willard Van Orman Quine
It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.
Willard Van Orman Quine
Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.