Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

Language is a social art.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

To be is to be the value of a variable.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

The familiar material objects may not be all that is real, but they are admirable examples.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

Physics investigates the essential nature of the world, and biology describes a local bump. Psychology, human psychology, describes a bump on the bump.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

'Ouch' is not independent of social training. One has only to prick a foreigner to appreciate that it is an English word.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

We do not learn first what to talk about and then what to say about it.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.

- Willard Van Orman Quine