Willard Van Orman Quine Quotes About Language

Quotes about: Language

• Language is a social art.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Art, Language, Social

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Douglas B. Quine (2008). “Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist: And Other Essays”, p.289, Harvard University Press

• 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

  Museums, Labels, Language

• Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Redemption, Language, Sin

  Willard Van Orman Quine (1973). “The roots of reference”

• No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Two, Doe, Language

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia S. Churchland, Dagfinn Føllesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.12, MIT Press

• Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Growing Up, Elephants, Different

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia Smith Churchland, Dagfinn Follesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.8, MIT Press

• The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Music, Order, Play

• We cannot stem linguistic change, but we can drag our feet. If each of us were to defy Alexander Pope and be the last to lay the old aside, it might not be a better world, but it would be a lovelier language.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Feet, Would Be, World

  W. V. QUINE, Willard Van Orman Quine (1987). “Quiddities”, p.231, Harvard University Press

• Some have said that the thesis [of indeterminacy] is a consequence of my behaviorism. Some have said that it is a reductio ad absurdum of my behaviorism. I disagree with this second point, but I agree with the first. I hold further that the behaviorism approach is mandatory. In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist, but in linguistics one has no choice.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Choices, Psychology, May

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Douglas B. Quine (2008). “Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist: And Other Essays”, p.341, Harvard University Press

• English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Simple, Data, Native Language

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.93, Harvard University Press

• Linguistically, and hence conceptually, the things in sharpest focus are the things that are public enough to be talked of publicly, common and conspicuous enough to be talked of often, and near enough to sense to be quickly identified and learned by name; it is to these that words apply first and foremost.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Names, Focus, Firsts

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia S. Churchland, Dagfinn Føllesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.17, MIT Press

• The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms connecting them. Words, or their inscriptions, unlike points, miles, classes and the rest, are tangible objects of the size so popular in the marketplace, where men of unlike conceptual schemes communicate at their best. The strategy is one of ascending to a common part of two fundamentally disparate conceptual schemes, the better to discuss the disparate foundations. No wonder it helps in philosophy.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Party

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