Nelson Goodman Quotes

#1. If we are ready to tolerate everything as understood, there is nothing left to explain; while if we sourly refuse to take anything, even tentatively, as clear, no explanation can be given.

Nelson Goodman

#2. Any effort ... to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while the reward of success is banality.

Nelson Goodman

#3. An answer, once found, is dull; and the only remaining interest lies in a further effort to render equally dull what is still obscure enough to be intriguing.

Nelson Goodman

#4. We make versions, and true versions make worlds.

Nelson Goodman

#5. Discovering laws involves drafting them. Recognizing patterns
is very much a matter of inventing and imposing them. Comprehension
and creation go on together.

Nelson Goodman

#6. I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there actually are in heaven and earth.

Nelson Goodman

#7. Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style, to recognize the work of an artist or school, to see or hear in new ways, is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add.

Nelson Goodman

#8. We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.

Nelson Goodman

#9. Truth cannot be defined or tested by agreement with 'the world'; for not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature of agreement between a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous.

Nelson Goodman

#10. Rules and particular inferences alike are justified by being brought into agreement with each other. A rule is amended if it yields an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend.

Nelson Goodman

#11. What intrigues us as a problem, and what will satisfy us as a solution, will depend upon the line we draw between what is already clear and what needs to be clarified.

Nelson Goodman