Peirce Quotes

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. 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

{Before the time of Benjamin Peirce it never occurred to anyone that mathematical research} was one of the things for which a mathematical department existed. Today it is a commonplace in all the leading universities. Peirce stood alone - a mountain peak whose absolute height might be hard to measure, but which towered above all the surrounding country. ~ Julian Coolidge

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

Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication, and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results; their broad universality; their practical infallibility. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Galactic Hot Dogs is an insanely entertaining, eye-popping adventure! ~ Lincoln Peirce

motivation for not eating meat and dairy is to maintain optimal health, not to rid myself of the obsession and compulsion that are the hallmark of addiction. If obsession and compulsion are the issue - smoking cigarettes, not being able to stop texting your toxic ex, self-harm - and you want to get past it, you need a Bright Line. If health is your objective, there is no evidence that perfect is better than "really good." Seriously. You can comply with a health goal 95 percent of the time, and it will benefit you as much as 100 percent perfection. ~ Susan Peirce Thompson

I can't do anything about the thoughts that come into my head, but I can do something about the ones that stay there!. ~ Penney Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Kepler's discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler - such penetrating minds as Descartes and Pascal - were abandoning the study of geometry ... because they said it was so UTTERLY USELESS. There was the future of the human race almost trembling in the balance; for had not the geometry of conic sections already been worked out in large measure, and had their opinion that only sciences apparently useful ought to be pursued, the nineteenth century would have had none of those characters which distinguish it from the ancien régime. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Intuition is a powerful tool that can heal the painful split we all feel between our earthly, mundane selves and our divine, eternal selves. When we realize that our spiritual knowledge is in us right now, and always has been, we become filled with light, light-hearted, and enlightened. ~ Penney Peirce

Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics; but experience shows that these men beyond all others are held in an iron vice of metaphysical theory, because by theories that they have never called in question. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Every piece of clutter you dissolve back into clear light allows your higher inner blueprint, your soul's destiny, to translate fluidly and accurately into the form of your life. The clearer you become, the easier it is to evolve along with the planet - with no snags, stuckness, or suffering. This is the act of becoming transparent. ~ Penney Peirce

The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

It's so interesting how transparency works. Not only can you see yourself when you open, relax, show up fully, and allow vulnerability to be natural, but that empowers others to see more of you - and of themselves. On the other hand, when you're open, exposed, and undefended without even trying, you can see through layers of interference or illusions of opacity in people and situations that used to stop you. You have Superman's X-ray vision!" - from Transparency: Seeing Through to Our Expanded Human Capacity ~ Penney Peirce

[According to Peirce] '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.' … nominalism denies the social altogether … 'the community is to be considered as an end in itself'… knowledge cannot depend on the inferences of single individuals … Logic is rooted in the social principle. ~ Louis Menand

Charles Peirce wrote the definition of University in the Century Dictionary. He called it an institution for purposes of study. They wrote to him that their notion had been that a university was an institution for instruction. He wrote back that if they had any such notion they were grievously mistaken, that a university had not and never had had anything to do with instruction and that until we got over this idea we should not have any university in this country. ~ Max Harold Fisch

For example, there are numbers of chemists who occupy themselves exclusively with the study of dyestuffs. They discover facts that are useful to scientific chemistry; but they do not rank as genuine scientific men. The genuine scientific chemist cares just as much to learn about erbium-the extreme rarity of which renders it commercially unimportant-as he does about iron. He is more eager to learn about erbium if the knowledge of it would do more to complete his conception of the Periodic Law, which expresses the mutual relations of the elements. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Our own private intuition is the catalyst for self-improvement and self-realization, because when it comes to making deep and lasting changes in one's personal life, it is only subjective experience, not facts, that registers as real. ~ Penney Peirce

All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they can be applied ... This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. 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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Any given moment contains unlimited futures that can become real. The reality that occurs is the one you pay attention to. ~ Penney Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

[Benjamin Peirce's] lectures were not easy to follow. They were never carefully prepared. The work with which he rapidly covered the blackboard was very illegible, marred with frequent erasures, and not infrequent mistakes (he worked too fast for accuracy). He was always ready to digress from the straight path and explore some sidetrack that had suddenly attracted his attention, but which was likely to have led nowhere when the college bell announced the close of the hour and we filed out, leaving him abstractedly staring at his work, still with chalk and eraser in his hands, entirely oblivious of his departing class. ~ William Elwood Byerly

Gentlemen, that is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it is the truth. ~ Benjamin Peirce

I presume that to the uninitiated the formulae will appear cold and cheerless; but let it be remembered that, like other mathematical formulae, they find their origin in the divine source of all geometry. Whether I shall have the satisfaction of taking part in their exposition, or whether that will remain for some more profound expositor, will be seen in the future. ~ Benjamin Peirce

The soul has no other wish than to have an unlimited number of fearless, joyful playmates on the journey home. ~ Penney Peirce

We think only in signs. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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

Stress is something that makes you feel you can't be yourself. ~ Penney Peirce

The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions. ~ Benjamin Peirce

My language is the sum total of myself. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

And it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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

I absolutely know that you can, under your own steam, dissolve the shell that separates you from a higher experience of Self and a much better life. You don't need gurus or to be catapulted into super-natural experiences by dramatic events - you are becoming such a high-frequency being right here in your physical body, that what used to be meta-physical, trans-personal, and para-normal is now almost ordinary." - from Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration ~ Penney Peirce

One will meet, for example, the virtual assumption that what is relative to thought cannot be real. But why not, exactly? Red is relative to sight, but the fact that this or that is in that relation to vision that we call being red is not itself relative to sight; it is a real fact. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Science proceeds by inference, rather than by the deduction of mathematical proof. A series of observations is accumulated, forcing the deeper question: What must be true if we are to explain what is observed? What "big picture" of reality offers the best fit to what is actually observed in our experience? American scientist and philosopher Charles S. Peirce used the term "abduction" to refer to the way in which scientists generate theories that might offer the best explanation of things. The method is now more often referred to as "inference to the best explanation." It is now widely agreed to be the philosophy of investigation of the world characteristic of the natural sciences. ~ Alister E. McGrath

Take a look, kid! Everywhere around you, there are moments happening! They happen, and then they're gone! ~ Lincoln Peirce

Again, let's pay all due respect to De Palma and put him over here so we're not saying, "Mine's deeper, mine's better." Let's just say, in reading the book, what I fell in love with was this mother-daughter story that was so amazing and so profound. ~ Kimberly Peirce

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

It was a good book and it was an awesome and fun thing to be in color. ~ Lincoln Peirce

To satisfy our doubts . . . it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency -- by something upon which our thinking has no effect. . . . Our external permanency would not be external, in our sense, if it was restricted in its influence to one individual. It must be something which affects, or might affect, every man. And, though these affections are necessarily as various as are individual conditions, yet the method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same. Such is the method of science. Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion. The new conception here involved is that of Reality. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Notwithstanding all that has been discovered since Newton's time, his saying that we are little children picking up pretty pebbles on the beach while the whole ocean lies before us unexplored remains substantially as true as ever, and will do so though we shovel up the pebbles by steam shovels and carry them off in carloads. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Gentlemen, as we study the universe we see everywhere the most tremendous manifestations of force. In our own experience we know of but one source of force, namely will. How then can we help regarding the forces we see in nature as due to the will of some omnipresent, omnipotent being? Gentlemen, there must be a GOD. ~ Benjamin Peirce

All the greatest achievements of mind have been beyond the power of unaided individuals. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

There never was a sounder logical maxim of scientific procedure than Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is to say; before you try a complicated hypothesis, you should make quite sure that no simplification of it will explain the facts equally well. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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

Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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

We start, then, with nothing, pure zero. But this is not the nothing of negation. For not means other than, and other is merely a synonym of the ordinal numeral second. As such it implies a first; while the present pure zero is prior to every first. The nothing of negation is the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility
boundless possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Some persons fancy that bias and counter-bias are favorable to the extraction of truth–that hot and partisan debate is the way to investigate. This is the theory of our atrocious legal procedure. But Logic puts its heel upon this suggestion. It irrefragably demonstrates that knowledge can only be furthered by the real desire for it, and that the methods of obstinacy, of authority and every mode of trying to reach a foregone conclusion, are absolutely of no value. These things are proved. The reader is at liberty to think so or not as long as the proof is not set forth, or as long as he refrains from examining it. Just so, he can preserve, if he likes, his freedom of opinion in regard to the propositions of geometry; only, in that case, if he takes a fancy to read Euclid, he will do well to skip whatever he finds with A, B, C, etc., for, if he reads attentively that disagreeable matter, the freedom of his opinion about geometry may unhappily be lost forever. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

No general description of the mode of advance of human knowledge can be just which leaves out of account the social aspect of knowledge. That is of its very essence. What a thing society is! The workingman, with his trade union, knows that. Men and women moving in polite society understand it, still better. But Bohemians, like me, whose work is done in solitude, are apt to forget that not only is a man as a whole little better than a brute in solitude, but also that everything that bears any important meaning to him must receive its interpretation from social considerations. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

There are a number of times when we have found, there's a number of old-school special effects in here that are fantastic, but there are definitely some times that we went digital and you're not going to tell the difference, I don't think. I think it just serves the storytelling because that's just the era that we live in. ~ Kimberly Peirce

The woof and warp of all thought and all research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in symbols; so that it is wrong to say that a good language is important to good thought, merely; for it is the essence of it. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Let it be considered that what is more wholesome than any particular belief is integrity of belief; and that to avoid looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is quite as immoral as it is disadvantageous. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

I think it's always a challenge when you're telling a story that people know. But hopefully, good storytelling - well, there's two things. One is, you definitely have to have surprises and changes so that people are - you keep them interested, you take them down roads that they didn't expect and give them suspense and surprise. ~ Kimberly Peirce

A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

The elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

What the pragmatist has his pragmatism for is to be able to say, Here is a definition and it does not differ at all from your confusedly apprehended conception because there is no practical difference. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

I don't make movies about issues. This is my same litmus test for all the movies I love: Is it a great character on a great emotional quest with a great emotional need? Do they overcome great emotional obstacles? Is it a fantastic story? I didn't set out to be a political activist. I'm just a human being who's moved by certain things, and if certain things break my heart, I set out to fix them. ~ Kimberly Peirce

We cannot begin with complete doubt. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Wearing a bath towel around the school yard and pretending it's a cape doesn't mean you have magical powers. ~ Lincoln Peirce

But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

What is man? ... What a strange union of matter and mind! A machine for converting material into spiritual force. ~ Benjamin Peirce

Surrender is learning to get out of the way of what wants to happen naturally. ~ Penney Peirce

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men. To employ these rare minds on such work is like running a steam engine by burning diamonds. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

It has often been argued that absolute scepticism is self-contradictory; but this is a mistake: and even if it were not so, it would be no argument against the absolute sceptic, inasmuch as he does not admit that no contradictory propositions are true. Indeed, it would be impossible to move such a man, for his scepticism consists in considering every argument and never deciding upon its validity; he would, therefore, act in this way in reference to the arguments brought against him. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

We live in a culture of secrecy, where hiding and lying are accepted as natural, even though we don't like it. We want honesty, transparency, and authenticity in our loved ones, our groups and organizations, and in our own self so we can reach the heights of our capacity. By clinging to the opaque reality we stall our evolution. ~ Penney Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Give a boy - ANY boy - enough time, and he WILL eventually pick his nose! ~ Lincoln Peirce

The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.But in this water there are countless objects at different depths; and certain influences will give certain kinds of those objects an upward influence which may be intense enough and continue long enough to bring them into the upper visible layer. After the impulse ceases they commence to sink downwards. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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

Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

The appearance of Professor Benjamin Peirce, whose long gray hair, straggling grizzled beard and unusually bright eyes sparkling under a soft felt hat, as he walked briskly but rather ungracefully across the college yard, fitted very well with the opinion current among us that we were looking upon a real live genius, who had a touch of the prophet in his make-up. ~ William Elwood Byerly

A pair of statements may be taken conjunctively or disjunctively; for example, "It lightens and it thunders ," is conjunctive, "It lightens or it thunders" is disjunctive. Each such individual act of connecting a pair of statements is a new monad for the mathematician . ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Many a man has cherished for years as his hobby some vague shadow of an idea too meaningless to be positively false; he has nevertheless passionately loved it has made it his companion by day and by night and has given to it his strength and his life leaving all other occupations for its sake....and then he has waked up one morning to find it gone...and the essence of his life along with it. ~ Charles Peirce

[For] men to whom nothing seems great but reason ... nature ... is a cosmos, so admirable, that to penetrate to its ways seems to them the only thing that makes life worth living. These are the men whom we see possessed by a passion to learn ... Those are the natural scientific men; and they are the only men that have any real success in scientific research. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

When you see through a defense mechanism, you don't stop at the intimidating behavior but go right on into the underlying misperception about life and through that to the path back to harmony. When you see through people's fear-based actions, motives, and secrets, you're really aiming for their sweet vulnerability, inner beauty, and magnificence - and you find their soul. ~ Penney Peirce

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

Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus "theoretically," is to uselanguage in a Pickwickian sense. In practice, and in fact, mathematics is not exempt from that liability to error that affects everything that man does. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Projection into the future does not create security because the future is not really there. It's a fluid mirage. The only security is merging with The Field, right now. ~ Penney Peirce

I like violence because I like looking at it and I like understanding emotional and physical violence and how they work with one another ... It's operating in all these levels of hopefully - Oedipus is one of my favorite stories, that's like falling down a well when you read that - so that would be the hope, that each thing causes the next. ~ Kimberly Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

To know what we think, to be masters of our own meaning, will make a solid foundation for great and weighty thought. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

I hear you say: 'All that is not /fact/ : it is poetry'. Nonsense! Bad poetry is false, I grant; but nothing is truer than true poetry. And let me tell the scientific men that the artists are much finer and more accurate observers than they are, except of the special minutiae that the scientific man is looking for. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

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. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

There are many cases of these algebras which may obviously be combined into natural classes, but the consideration of this portion of the subject will be reserved to subsequent researches. ~ Benjamin Peirce