It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system. – Charles Sanders Peirce
It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last. – Charles Sanders Peirce
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic. – Charles Sanders Peirce
Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing. – Charles Sanders Peirce
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise. – Charles Sanders Peirce
A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be. – Charles Sanders Peirce
Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else. – Charles Sanders Peirce
The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking. – Charles Sanders Peirce
