Willard Van Orman Quine Quotes

The names for things don't come first. Words stagger after, hopelessly trying to become the sensation.

I believe that the development of language - of naming, categorization, conceptualization - destroys our ability to see as we age.

Because education is such a broad area, I chose to focus on language learning.

As children we hoard and gloat over words. Words give ownership: we name our world and we claim it...Children trust the power of words.

Such a small percentage of our population carry the burden of knowing what's really going on in our country's name, and I think that unless that's out in the open and people are discussing it, then our healthy democracy is not so healthy.

Language instruction should start in the first grade. Writing, also.

First I think I was interested in the stories, and later on, I became more interested in the language itself, so the stories became almost secondary, but it was kind of a background music for my life.

The child begins to perceive the world not only through his [or her] eyes but also through his [or her] speech

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

At about a year and a half, the child discovers another fact, and that is that each thing has its own name.

In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say is "Mine!" A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say "Mine!" when you grow up, has - to put in mildly - a fatal design flaw.

Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.

The first paragraph. The last paragraph. That's where the story is going and how it's going to end. Or else you'll go off in a hundred different directions.

The senses at first let in particular Ideas, and furnish the yet empty Cabinet: And the Mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the Memory, and Names got to them.

Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That's the hardest part and that's what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.

It is impossible to disassociate language from science...To call forth a concept, a word is needed.

All last year we tried to teach him (Fernando Valenzuela) English, and the only word he learned was million.

My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

A sound waiting to be a word.

I daydream too. I visualise. I think ahead, I can do it now, sitting here. I think ahead to the walk-in, I can hear the crowd, the music, I can feel the cameras all around me, I can feel movements in my body as I am heading there, I can bring up that incredible feeling you get when you step into the cage.

I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it.

If you close your eyes to see the view, you miss everything surrounding you

What are we going to do about the injuries to our country still going on right in front of our eyes? It gets me out of bed in the morning. It makes me mad enough to get my blood up and want to get out there with [Mark] Twain and get it said and that is why I still hit the road and go out on the stage and keep working at staying alive.

My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.