Ontology Quotes - Page 3

• Choose life over death, Niko, when a choice can be made that puts no soul in jeopardy.

  Janet Morris

  Life, Loyalty, Choices

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• The variables of quantification, 'something,' 'nothing,' 'everything,' range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Order, Ifs And, Variables

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.187, Harvard University Press

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• Infinity is a dark illimitable ocean, without bound.

  John Milton

  Ocean, Dark, Infinity

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• There's something in the Western mind that gets very nervous when you try to talk about the bedrock of ontology.

  Terence McKenna

  Mind, Trying, Nervous

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• A first fact should surprise us, or rather would surprise us if we were not used to it. How does it happen there are people who do not understand mathematics? If mathematics invokes only the rules of logic, such as are accepted by all normal minds...how does it come about that so many persons are here refractory?

  Henri Poincare

  People, Mind, Firsts

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• Some critics thought the ontology and theory of qualities absurd. No one had ever seen these little atoms, and furthermore, how could their mere arrangement produce a noisy, colourful, world in which day followed night and animals generated their own kind? Instead of a world created, cared, for and supervised by supernatural persons, the Epicureans appeared to the theologians to be assigning everything to chance. The latter were appalled by Lucretius's view of religion as cruel and oppressive and by the Epicurean insistence that death is the end of all experience.

  Catherine Wilson

  Animal, Night, Views

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• ALGEBRA is a general Method of Computation by certain Signs and Symbols which have been contrived for this Purpose, and found convenient.

  Colin Maclaurin

  Purpose, Logic, Found

  Colin MacLaurin (1756). “A Treatise of Algebra, in Three Parts: Containing I. The Fundamental Rules and Operations; II. The Composition and Resolution of Equations of All Degrees, and the Different Affections of Their Roots; III. The Application of Algebra and Geometry to Each Other. To which is Added an Appendix Concerning the General Properties of Geometrical Lines”, p.1

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• Experimental work provides the strongest evidence for scientific realism. This is not because we test hypotheses about entities. It is because entities that in principle cannot be 'observed' are manipulated to produce a new phenomena
  [sic] and to investigate other aspects of nature.

  Ian Hacking

  Science, Reality, Principles

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• Heaven is angered by my arrogance; my proof [of the four-color theorem] is also defective.

  Hermann Minkowski

  Color, Heaven, Arrogance

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• All sentences of the type 'deconstruction is X' or 'deconstruction is not X', a priori miss the point, which is to say that they are at least false. As you know, one of the principal things at stake in what is called in my texts 'deconstruction', is precisely the delimiting of ontology and above all of the third-person present indicative: S is P.

  Jacques Derrida

  Science, Missing, Mathematics

  Jacques Derrida (2010). “Copy, Archive, Signature: A Conversation on Photography”, p.1977, Stanford University Press

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• The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct "actuality" of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.

  Werner Heisenberg

  World, Impossible, Kind

  Werner Heisenberg (1962). “Physics and philosophy: the revolution in modern science”, Harpercollins College Div

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• I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Order, Taste

  Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp (1997). “The complete works of Marcel Duchamp”, Delano Greenridge Editions

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• If we base our belief systems on the humble assumption that the complexities of the world are ontologically beyond our understanding, then maybe our belief systems will make more sense and end up causing less suffering.

  Moby

  Humble, Understanding, Suffering

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• We think of the number "five" as applying to appropriate groups of any entities whatsoever - to five fishes, five children, five apples, five days... We are merely thinking of those relationships between those two groups which are entirely independent of the individual essences of any of the members of either group. This is a very remarkable feat of abstraction; and it must have taken ages for the human race to rise to it

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Children, Taken, Independent

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• How many pizzas are consumed each year in the United States? How many words have you spoken in your life? How many different peoples names appear in the New York Times each year? How many watermelons would fit inside the U.S. Capital building? What is the volume of all the human blood in the world?

  John Allen Paulos

  New York, Blood, Years

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• It is well known that the central problem of the whole of modern mathematics is the study of transcendental functions defined by differential equations.

  Felix Klein

  Logic, Study, Problem

  Felix Klein (1893). “The Evanston Colloquium: Lectures on Mathematics Delivered from Aug. 28 to Sept. 9, 1893 Before Members of the Congress of Mathematics Held in Connection with the World's Fair in Chicago at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill”

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• Many persons entertain a prejudice against mathematical language, arising out of a confusion between the ideas of a mathematical science and an exact science. ...in reality, there is no such thing as an exact science.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Reality, Ideas, Confusion

  William Stanley Jevons (1879). “Political Economy”

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• I'm reverent from a distance.

  Janet Morris

  Distance, Self Reliance, Belief

  Janet Morris (1986). “Beyond Sanctuary”, Ace Books

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• The fear of infinity is a form of myopia that destroys the possibility of seeing the actual infinite, even though it in its highest form has created and sustains us, and in its secondary transfinite forms occurs all around us and even inhabits our minds.

  Georg Cantor

  Mind, Myopia, Infinity

  "Infinity and the Mind". Book by Rudy Rucker, 1982.

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• No mercy goes unpunished by the angry gods.

  Critias

  God, Mercy, Angry

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• Gods have bloody hands.

  Janet Morris

  God, Hands, Bloody

  Janet Morris (1986). “Beyond Sanctuary”, Ace Books

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• All gods are tricksters, and war gods worst of any.

  Janet Morris

  War, Tricksters, Worst

  Janet Morris (2011). “Tempus with His Right-Side Companion Niko”, p.229, Paradise Publishing

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• Time is so...fluid where I live

  Janet Morris

  Time, Fluid

  Janet Morris, Chris Morris (2010). “The Sacred Band”, p.160, Paradise Publishing

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• So well do I love you, I go to my god singing your praises. When I meet my father, I will tell him I fought beside you.

  Janet Morris

  Love, Father, Singing

  Janet Morris (2011). “Tempus with His Right-Side Companion Niko”, p.101, Paradise Publishing

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• It's all the same - no good without evil, no balance...no maat. If we lose one, we lose the other. It's just life, that's all.

  Janet Morris

  Life, Evil, Balance

  Lynn Abbey, C. J. Cherryh, Janet Morris (1986). “Soul of the city”, Ace Books

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