Peirce Quotes & Sayings

My language is the sum total of myself. — 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

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

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

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

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

Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere . — Charles Sanders Peirce

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

It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

Your personal vibration or energy state is a blend of the contracted or expanded frequencies of your body, emotions, and thoughts at any given moment. The more you allow your soul to shine through you, the higher your personal vibration will be. — Penney Peirce

Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment. — Charles Sanders Peirce

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

Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way. — 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

How come you're always calling that TV weather guy?
Yeah you're obsessed with him! — Lincoln Peirce

The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief weare inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts. — 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

Willpower is not about resisting, forcing, or controlling
it's about choosing. — Penney 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

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. — Charles Sanders 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 may say that feelings have two kinds of intensity. One is the intensity of the feeling itself, by which loud sounds are distinguished from faint ones, luminous colors from dark ones, highly chromatic colors from almost neutral tints, etc. The other is the intensity of consciousness that lays hold of the feeling, which makes the ticking of a watch actually heard infinitely more vivid than a cannon shot remembered to have been heard a few minutes ago. — Charles Sanders 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

We cannot begin with complete doubt. — Charles Sanders 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

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

The branches of mathematics are as various as the sciences to which they belong, and each subject of physical enquiry has its appropriate mathematics. In every form of material manifestation, there is a corresponding form of human thought, so that the human mind is as wide in its range of thought as the physical universe in which it thinks. — Benjamin Peirce

Theres no mystery-the EMU Club is a hit! This is a fun, funny adventure that kids will love to read. — Lincoln Peirce

If you do really good storytelling, things that people also might anticipate and that they might have seen before - there's a reason we go back to stories that we love - so, even if there is a familiarity, if you can do it a different way and hopefully do it well enough, you actually feel the satisfaction of that anticipation given back to you. — Kimberly Peirce

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

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

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

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

Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least. Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute truth. — 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

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

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

Over against any cognition, there is an unknown but knowable reality; but over against all possible cognition, there is only the self-contradictory. In short, cognizability (in its widest sense) and being are not merely metaphysically the same, but are synonymous terms. — 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

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

Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all. — 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

{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

Theology, I am persuaded, derives its initial impulse from a religious wavering; for there is quite as much, or more, that is mysterious and calculated to awaken scientific curiosity in the intercourse with God, and it [is] a problem quite analogous to that of theology. — Charles Sanders Peirce

Our biggest priority should be to stay engaged. — Penney Peirce

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

I think it's why we're able to look at with comic book stories or origin stories, why is it that we can keep retelling these stories over and over? And hopefully it's because it hits something so universal and so primal inside of us that we actually yearn for that same story over and over. But toned and different form, and updated and modernized, and I can go into the specifics. — Kimberly 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

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

Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of events however we may vary the particular circumstances which precede the event. — 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

It is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man. — 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

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question. — Charles Sanders Peirce

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, although it must be accepted as true to that reality. Its truth consists in the fact that it is impossible to correct it, and in the fact that it only professes to consider one aspect of the percept. — Charles Sanders Peirce

When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness . — Charles Sanders Peirce

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. — 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

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

The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses. — Charles Sanders Peirce

You try to do as much as you can on set because practical looks cool and practical looks great. Until you get to a point where the reality is you look at it - and I went through this in my last movie which was a war film, which my brother fought in Iraq and I did a ton of research and as much as I could made it documentary-like - and then at some point on set, the reality is somebody says to you, "You know, you can use a real squib and you can have three hours of clean up and you can lose five shots or we can do that blood explosion in post and you can get those five extra shots." — Kimberly 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

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

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

The object of geometry in all its measuring and computing, is to ascertain with exactness the plan of the great Geometer, to penetrate the veil of material forms, and disclose the thoughts which lie beneath them? When our researches are successful, and when a generous and heaven-eyed inspiration has elevated us above humanity, and raised us triumphantly into the very presence, as it were, of the divine intellect, how instantly and entirely are human pride and vanity repressed, and, by a single glance at the glories of the infinite mind, are we humbled to the dust. — Benjamin 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

[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

Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object. — Charles Sanders Peirce

Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize. — 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

It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man's head, will sometimes act like an obstruction of inert matter in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty. — Charles Sanders Peirce

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions. — Benjamin 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

I love her [Kimberly Peirce]. Incredibly intense is a good way of describing her. Brutally honest. Really sharp. She's a director for actors. That's what she's best at, sitting down with an actor and just getting to the heart of what a scene is. And getting to the heart of not just what the scene is and the character is, but what you are, and how to build that bridge between the "me" and the character, and those emotions. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

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

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

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

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. — 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

The universe ought to be presumed too vast to have any character. — Charles Sanders 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

All human affairs rest upon probabilities, and the same thing is true everywhere. If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted would betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every great fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death. — 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

Your contribution is the energy produced in the doing of something, not the end product. — Penney Peirce

We do not really think, we are barely conscious, until something goes wrong. — Charles Sanders Peirce