Nelson Goodman Quotes

It's so hard for me to wrap my head around the concept of truth, I don't even know what people mean by it.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Our great cultural error is to assume that 'truth' arrives only through reductive theories.

What is the truth? Is it what you experience? Is it what I experience? Or is there some objective truth in between?

Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

The truth is that nearly everybody is right about some things and wrong about most things; and if a man's testimony is not to be taken until he is right on every subject, witnesses will be extremely scarce.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Common sense says that chairs and tables exist independently of whether anyone happens to perceive them or not.

Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts.

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

Truth as such is not a particularly important concept in naturalistic philosophy.

There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

You will not ever perceive the truth that is reality. There are many realities.

There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work

What is truth? What is a true story? Who is telling the truth, and what is truth in this world today?

Truth is an illusory notion.

We're awash in toxic memes right now. One of the most toxic, I think because it enables so many others, is the idea that truth doesn't matter, that truth is just relative, that there's no such thing as establishing the truth of anything. Your truth, my truth, we're all entitled to our own truths. That's pernicious, it's attractive to many people, and it is used to exploit people in all sorts of nefarious ways. The truth really does matter.

Any truth is only true up to a certain point. When one oversteps the mark, it becomes a non-truth.

Truth is always unfolding. It's not an absolute.

It seemed to me, in some way, especially when you're looking back at distant historical events, the "Truth" with a capital "T" is kind of the juxtaposition of all the many, many, many truths that seem true to people at the time.

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.

Truth is that which affirms propositionally the nature of reality as it is.