"The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which has to be acquired with difficulty."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea."
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"Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment."
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"The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality."
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"Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"My language is the sum total of myself."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics."
―Johann Gottlieb Fichte
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"The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses."
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"It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"The percept is the reality. It is not in propositional form. But the most immediate judgment concerning it is abstract. It is therefore essentially unlike the reality."
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"It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecutionof science as imagination."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"Whenever a man acts purposively, he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies makes up its entire bearing upon human conduct."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"We do not really think, we are barely conscious, until something goes wrong."
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"The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit."
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"Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic."
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"All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite."
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"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."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking."
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"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."
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"It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency toward an agreement between the ideas which suggest themselves to the human mind and those which are concerned in the laws of nature."
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"There is not a single truth of science upon which we ought to bet more than about a million of millions to one."
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"Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else."
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"Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"Third, consider the insistency of an idea. The insistency of a past idea with reference to the present is a quantity which is less, the further back that past idea is, and rises to infinity as the past idea is brought up into coincidence with the present."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"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."
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"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."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust"
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"Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions."
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"If an opinion can eventually go to the determination of a practical belief, it, in so far, becomes itself a practical belief; and every proposition that is not pure metaphysical jargon and chatter must have some possible bearing upon practice."
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"The universe ought to be presumed too vast to have any character."
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"Effort supposes resistance."
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"Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics"
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"The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally optimistic."
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"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."
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"All the greatest achievements of mind have been beyond the power of unaided individuals."
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"If liberty of speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, the uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"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."
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"This branch of mathematics [Probability] is the only one, I believe, in which good writers frequently get results which are entirely erroneous."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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"It is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man."
Charles Sanders Peirce
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