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Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

“The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic.”

FirstsCoursesLevelsCommonQualityClearTruth IsLogicPracticalsCommon SenseLogicalSevereMetaphysicalEpithet
Book:The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)
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“A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody,that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.”

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Book:Collected Papers
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“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.”

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Book:Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce
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“Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry.”

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Book:The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings
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