Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right.

Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.

If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, hassome indirect systematic efficacy in the development of theory.

Our acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of physics;we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged.

For me the problem of induction is a problem about the world: a problem of how we, as we are now (by our present scientific lights), in a world we never made, should stand better than random, or coin-tossing chances changes of coming out right when we predict by inductions. . . .

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.