Quotes by Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty

“True” resembles… a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so.

Compliment

Truth Is

Way

[Walt] Whitman and [humanist educator John] Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams – dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society – in the place of knowledge of God’s Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science…. As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman’s and Dewey’s dreams.

Country

Dream

Law

A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well is the chief instrument of cultural change.

Arguing

Chiefs

Talent

Academic disciplines are subject to being overtaken by attacks of “knowingness”- a state of mind and soul that prevents shudders of awe and makes one immune to enthusiasm.

Discipline

Intellectual

Soul

As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change – that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.

Philosophical

Philosophy

Swings

Had there been no Plato, the Christians would have had a harder time selling the idea that all God really wanted from us was fraternal love.

Christian

Ideas

Plato

I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.

Able

Heidegger

Wish

I think you can have a Left that isn’t culturally conservative talking about lunch-bucket issues.

Lunch

Talking

Thinking

If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?

Hell

Knows

Would Be

If the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.

Body

Easier

Mind

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Able

Age

Arguing

Believe

Body

Causes

Chiefs

Children

Christian

Citizens

Civilization

Compliment

Country

Description

Differences

Discipline

Doe

Dream

Easier

Essence

Europe

Forever

Giving

Heidegger

Hell

Ideas

Important

Individual

Intellectual

Knows

Law

Legacy

Love

Lunch

Made

Matter

Mind

Moral

Paradise

People

Philosophical

Philosophy

Plato

Pride

Relation

Religious

Self

Silly

Soul

Speak

The Future Blueprint

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Quotes by Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty

“True” resembles… a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so.

A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well is the chief instrument of cultural change.

Academic disciplines are subject to being overtaken by attacks of “knowingness”- a state of mind and soul that prevents shudders of awe and makes one immune to enthusiasm.

Had there been no Plato, the Christians would have had a harder time selling the idea that all God really wanted from us was fraternal love.

I think you can have a Left that isn’t culturally conservative talking about lunch-bucket issues.

If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?

If the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.

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Topics by Richard Rorty

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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