"If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything."

--

Source : "Meaning and Understanding". Book by Herman Parret and ‎Jacques Bouveresse, p. 186, "Radical interpretation", 1981.

Donald Davidson

#Behaviour Quotes #Utterance Quotes #Way Quotes

“The spirit of submission is choosing His way over ours for His sake.”
“In Israel we tend to be carried away by our emotions.”
“Many times in life, those who do the most correcting, need the most correcting.”
“If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children.”
“There was a saying that the strength of a manâ€™s steel was only known under the hammer of circumstance. If anyone had asked me a few hours ago, I would have said that nearly five years of boyhood had hammered me into constant fear and excessive caution. But now I realised it had done the opposite. It had shaped me into someone who stepped forwards and reached for what she wanted. It was too late for me to tuck my hands behind my back and wait like a good woman.”

Source : Alison Goodman (2011). “Eona”, p.46, Penguin
“Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance; for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.”
“I think writing is really a process of communication. . . . It's the sense of being in contact with people who are part of a particular audience that really makes a difference to me in writing.”
“There comes a point where emotions must give way to objective facts.”

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