[Walt] Whitman and [humanist educator John] Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams - dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society - in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science.... As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman's and Dewey's dreams.
Richard RortyTo abjure the notion of the truly human is to abjure the attempt to divinize the self as a replacement for a divinized world.
Richard Rorty"True" resembles... a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so.
Richard RortyIf the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.
Richard Rorty