A Quote by Willard Van Orman Quine

Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference.

Willard Van Orman Quine

Quote Topics

Astronomers Domestic Frames Goats Heavens Minor More Readily Reference Seems Sensitive Separation Sheep Students

Quote Author

Willard Van Orman Quine
American - Philosopher
June 25, 1908 - December 25, 2000

It is written that there shall be a separation, and the sheep shall be separated from the goats. The other preachers have the sheep; I have the goats. And I have a few sheep among my goats, but they are very ragged.

Sojourner Truth

Today we know not only that there is a terrible amount of disorder in the heavens - great catastrophes or conflagrations occur frequently - but evolution gives us a perfectly natural explanation of such order as there is. No distinguished astronomer now traces "the finger of God" in the heavens; and astronomers ought to know best.

Joseph McCabe

Examples of vicious courses practiced in a domestic circle corrupt more readily and more deeply when we behold them in persons in authority.

Juvenal

Sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.

Terry Pratchett

You Liberals think that goats are just sheep from broken homes.

Malcolm Bradbury

I feed horses and goats and sheep all day and, once in a while, come and talk about movies.

Steve Zahn

Creeds are definitions of what it means to be a Christian. They are fences that, albeit imperfectly, seek to separate sheep from goats.

R. C. Sproul, Jr.

I’d compare stock pickers to astrologers but I don’t want to bad mouth astrologers.

Eugene Fama

The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated, smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived.

Aristotle

Economists are about as useful as astrologers in predicting the future (and, like astrologers, they never let failure on one occasion diminish certitude on the next).

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

None of us see the world as it is but as we are, as our frames of reference, or maps, define the territory.

Stephen Covey

As our domestic fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers.

Henry David Thoreau

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

Sue Grafton

I do not see how astronomers can help feeling exquisitely insignificant, for every new page of the Book of the Heavens they open reveals to them more and more that the world we are so proud of is to the universe of careening globes as is one mosquito to the winged and hoofed flocks and herds that darken the air and populate the plains and forests of all the earth. If you killed the mosquito would it be missed? Verily, What is Man, that he should be considered of God?

Mark Twain

I think one reason is that philosophers are more insecure to speak accessibly because non-philosophers are skeptical that philosophers have any special expertise. After all, all people - not just philosophers - have attitudes and points of view on various philosophical questions, and they rather resent being told that there are professionals who can think about these things better.