Top 72 A Priori Quotes
#1. I largely defer to the cognitive ethologists. I believe that the arguments that they make on this score are extremely persuasive. More than this, I do think as well that a priori objections by philosophers to successful research programs in the sciences have a very bad track record.
Hilary Kornblith
#2. Any necessary truth, whether a priori or a posteriori, could not have turned out otherwise.
Saul Kripke
#3. No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.
Albert Camus
#4. Self-evidence, of which Russell has said so much, can only be discarded in logic by language itself preventing every logical mistake. That logic is a priori consists in the fact that we cannot think illogically.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#5. Natural science physics contains in itself synthetical judgments a priori, as principles ... Space then is a necessary representation a priori, which serves for the foundation of all external intuitions.
Immanuel Kant
#6. There are certain questions that scientists may not ask, or, more accurately, for some questions, there are certain answers that scientists must a priori preclude from consideration.
Satoshi Kanazawa
#7. What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses.
Robert M. Pirsig
#8. In this movement of colors I find the essence, which does not arise from a system, or an a priori theory.
Robert Delaunay
#9. One basis for life and another basis for science is a priori a lie.
Karl Marx
#10. Life has no meaning a priori ... It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#11. The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief weare inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts.
Charles Sanders Peirce
#12. The so-called law of induction cannot possibly be a law of logic, since it is obviously a proposition with a sense.
Nor, therefore, can it be an a priori law.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#13. Both a priori reasoning and experience teach us that as as these funds grow larger the geometrical rate of growth by compound interest ultimately defeats itself.
Benjamin Graham
#14. Often one postulates that a priori, all states are equally probable. This is not true in the world as we see it. This world is not correctly described by the physics which assumes this postulate.
Richard P. Feynman
#15. Extremely unlikely events occur every moment and it is not a priori unthinkable that the evolution of life should be due to mere chance than that a particular order in a pack of cards should result from mechanical shuffling.
Leszek Kolakowski
#16. Art is a true aesthetic synthesis , "a priori" of feeling and image in the intuition, as to which it may be repeated that feeling without image is blind, and image without feeling is void.
Benedetto Croce
#17. Omniscience about life and death is not within a physician's purview. A doctor should never write off a person a priori.
Jerome Groopman
#19. If the intuition must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori. If, on the other hand, the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition, I can then easily conceive the possibility of such an a priori knowledge.
Immanuel Kant
#20. I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of the universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless.
R. Buckminster Fuller
#21. In philosophical terms, the opposite of rationalism is not irrationalism but empiricism, that is, a willingness to form beliefs on the basis of experience rather than from a priori deduction. Empirical evidence never yields the dogmatic certainty that accompanies logical deduction.
John Quiggin
#22. The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.
Lawrence M. Krauss
#23. The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.
Lawrence M. Krauss
#24. I can be an artist a posteriori, not a priori. If my pictures tell the story, our story, human story, then in a hundred years, then they can be considered an art reference, but now they are not made as art. I'm a journalist. My life's on the road, my studio is the planet.
Sebastiao Salgado
#25. Wherever Mathematics is mixed up with anything, which is outside its field, you will find attempts to demonstrate these merely conventional propositions a priori, and it will be your task to find out the false deduction in each case.
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
#26. The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.
H.L. Mencken
#27. The first step in identifying "heresy" is to refuse all identifications with the subjective intuitions and experience of the "heretic," and to see his words only in an impersonal realm in which there is no dialogue - in which dialogue is denied a priori.
Thomas Merton
#28. I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature.
Gottfried Leibniz
#29. We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together.
Herbert Spencer
#30. The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.
Herbert Marcuse
#31. Some atheists are quite explicit that their atheism comes first. One of the most famous is Richard Lewontin, a professor of genetics, who said it wasn't science that compelled him to accept a materialistic explanation of the universe. It was an a priori materialism.
John Lennox
#32. [T]he downside of skepticism: it can easily turn into an arrogant position of a priori rejection of any new phenomenon or idea, a position that is as lacking in critical thinking as the one of the true believer, and that simply does not help either science or the public at large.
Massimo Pigliucci
#33. The test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have proved a poor guide in the development of science, which often makes progress by its encounter with the totally unexpected and initially extremely puzzling.
John Polkinghorne
#34. Time is not an empirical concept. For neither co-existence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori.
Immanuel Kant
#35. The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate.
Edmund Burke
#36. Faith in people is an a priori requirement for dialogue.
Paulo Freire
#37. [ ... ] there can be no a priori moral framework in a modern democracy [ ... ]
Reza Aslan
#38. The exact sciences also start from the assumption that in the end it will always be possible to understand nature, even in every new field of experience, but that we may make no a priori assumptions about the meaning of the word understand.
Werner Heisenberg
#39. Her feeling was rather that, given the nature of the human couple, the love of man and woman is a priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances) in the love between man and dog, that oddity of human history probably unplanned by the Creator.
Anonymous
#40. Many things would be changed for Americans if they would only admit that there is ill-luck in this world and that misfortune is not a priori a crime.
Simone De Beauvoir
#41. Whether arrived at through reason or revelation ... natural law is the highest law known to man. It is anchored in the very existential nature of man and is therefore a priori just.
Ilana Mercer
#42. There is an old saying "well begun is half done" - 'tis a bad one. I would use instead, "Not begun at all till half done;" so according to that I have not begun my Poem and consequently (a priori) can say nothing about it.
John Keats
#43. It seems strange to make a priori arguments about the relative performance of governments and the markets in health care when there is so much empirical evidence.
John Quiggin
#44. Intellectually, true beauty is very difficult to distinguish a priori from the bloom of youth.
Andre Breton
#45. Open the ovoid mother and find the ovoid girl; open the child and the next egg grins up its invitation to crack it. You can never tell a priori how many iterations await you; you hope they continue forever. My daughter, my matryoshka.
Natalie Angier
#46. Let me simply state that it is wrong to regard any other human being, a priori, as an object, or an 'It.' This is so because each and every human being - you, every friend, every stranger, every foreigner - is precious.
M. Scott Peck
#47. God is the great comprehensive a priori integrity of Universe within which human beings find themselves to be operating.
R. Buckminster Fuller
#48. So they're the a priori principles of possible experience
Anonymous
#49. The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
William James
#50. If it be true that there can be no metaphysics transcending human reason, it is no less true that there can be no empirical knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure of cognition.
C. G. Jung
#51. Before anything happens, awareness is already there, a priori.
Osho
#52. 2.223 In order to discover whether the picture is true or false we must compare it with reality. 2.224 It cannot be discovered from the picture alone whether it is true or false. 2.225 There is no picture which is a priori true.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#53. Because of the a priori element in intention, good intentions are so tempting - compared with a successive unfolding in time - and have so often in them some narcotic which develops an inner gaze instead of a resilience that begets energy.
Soren Kierkegaard
#54. It is an empirical judgement [to say] that I perceive and judge an object with pleasure. But it is an a priori judgement [to say] that I find it beautiful, i.e. I attribute this satisfaction necessarily to every one.
Immanuel Kant
#55. I don't believe in empirical science. I only believe in a priori truth.
Kurt Godel
#56. Upon the solution of this problem, or upon sufficient proof of the impossibility of synthetical knowledge a priori, depends the existence or downfall of metaphysics.
Immanuel Kant
#57. All models divide naturally ... into two a priori parts: one is kinematics, whose aim is to parameterize the forms of the states of the process under consideration, and the other is dynamics, describing the evolution in time of these forms.
Rene Thom
#58. In fact the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won't fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling.
Erasmus Darwin
#59. Consequently, immune systems at this level can be defined a priori as embodied expectations of injury and the corresponding programmes of protection and repair.
Peter Sloterdijk
#60. race has the feel of being a priori, but in reality it is a historical construct that regulates our interhuman relations, though not always toward malicious forms of racism. Indeed, race may also enable forms of community bound by filial care and interests.
Victor Anderson
#61. It is possible to demonstrate God's existence, although not a priori, yet a posteriori from some work of His more surely known to us.
Thomas Aquinas
#62. We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
#63. We can be sure, he [Kant] says, that anything we shall ever experience must show the characteristics affirmed of it in our a priori knowledge, because these characteristics are due to our own nature, and therefore nothing can ever come into our experience without acquiring these characteristics.
Bertrand Russell
#64. Given the nature of the human couple, the love of a man and a woman is a priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances) in the love between man and dog ... It is a completely selfless love.
Milan Kundera
#65. As so often happens in philosophy, clever people accept a false general principle on a priori grounds and then devote endless labour and ingenuity to explaining away plain facts which obviously conflict with it.
C. D. Broad
#67. All of life is iterative. It goes back to the point I made earlier, which is you can't a priori know enough to even ask the right questions.
Grady Booch
#68. synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all; we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false judgments.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#69. I can see no justification whatever for the attitude which refuses on purely a priori grounds to accept action at a distance ... Such an attitude bespeaks an unimaginativeness, a mental obtuseness and obstinacy.
Percy Williams Bridgman
#70. A priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world.
Bertrand Russell
#71. The idea of a priori moral judgements ('It is morally wrong to inflict gratuitous pain') is completely acceptable to the vast majority of human beings. Only a few philosophers would disagree.
William Boyd
#72. It is of great consequence to have previously determined the concept that one wants to elucidate through observation before questioning experience about it; for one finds in experience what one needs only if one knows in advance what to look for.
Immanuel Kant
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