Nelson Goodman Quotes & Sayings

My title "The Fabrication of Facts," has the virtue not only of indicating pretty clearly what I am going to discuss but also of irritating those fundamentalists who know very well that facts are found not madder, that facts constitute the one and only real world, and that knowledge consists of believing the facts. These articles of faith so firmly possess most of us, they so bind and blind us, that "fabrication of fact" has a paradoxical sound. "Fabrication" has become a synonym for "falsehood" or "fiction" as contrasted with "truth" or "fact." Of course, we must distinguish falsehood and fiction from truth and fact; but we cannot, I am sure, do it on ground that fiction is fabricated and fact found. - 91 — Nelson Goodman

Discovering laws involves drafting them. Recognizing patterns
is very much a matter of inventing and imposing them. Comprehension
and creation go on together. — Nelson Goodman

An answer, once found, is dull; and the only remaining interest lies in a further effort to render equally dull what is still obscure enough to be intriguing. — Nelson Goodman

Rules and particular inferences alike are justified by being brought into agreement with each other. A rule is amended if it yields an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend. — Nelson Goodman

Any effort ... to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while the reward of success is banality. — Nelson Goodman

Truth cannot be defined or tested by agreement with 'the world'; for not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature of agreement between a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous. — Nelson Goodman

Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style, to recognize the work of an artist or school, to see or hear in new ways, is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add. — Nelson Goodman

We aim at simplicity and hope for truth. — Nelson Goodman

I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there actually are in heaven and earth. — Nelson Goodman

We make versions, and true versions make worlds. — Nelson Goodman

If we are ready to tolerate everything as understood, there is nothing left to explain; while if we sourly refuse to take anything, even tentatively, as clear, no explanation can be given. — Nelson Goodman

What intrigues us as a problem, and what will satisfy us as a solution, will depend upon the line we draw between what is already clear and what needs to be clarified. — Nelson Goodman