Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment.

We do not really think, we are barely conscious, until something goes wrong.

The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs.

The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which hs to be acquired with difficulty.

It is... easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

My language is the sum total of myself.

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.

It is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man.

The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.

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.

There is a kink in my damned brain that prevents me from thinking as other people think.

We cannot begin with complete doubt.

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.

A hypothesis is something which looks as if it might be true and were true, and which is capable of verification or refutation by comparison with facts.

A true proposition is a proposition belief which would never lead to such disappointment so long as the proposition is not understood otherwise than it was intended.

Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer than a toss up.

... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered.

Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions.

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.

All the progress we have made in philosophy ... is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom.

Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.

The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea.

There is not a single truth of science upon which we ought to bet more than about a million of millions to one.

Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere .

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.

Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics.

The universe ought to be presumed too vast to have any character.

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.

If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust.

All the greatest achievements of mind have been beyond the power of unaided individuals.

Effort supposes resistance.

By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about.

Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.

Still, 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 one [the logician] studies the science of drawing conclusions, the other [the mathematician] the science which draws necessary conclusions.

When an image is said to be singular, it is meant that it is absolutely determinate in all respects. Every possible character, or the negative thereof, must be true of such an image.

Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason. Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature, and for uniformity in general, is to suppose them results of evolution.

And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life.

This branch of mathematics [Probability] is the only one, I believe, in which good writers frequently get results which are entirely erroneous.

It is a common observation that a science first begins to be exact when it is quantitatively treated. What are called the exact sciences are no others than the mathematical ones.

Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize.

We, one and all of us, have an instinct to pray; and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.

The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit.

We one and all of us have an instinct to pray and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.

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.