Primary Circular

Famous quotes containing the words primary and/or circular:

    One of the effects of a safe and civilised life is an immense oversensitiveness which makes all the primary emotions somewhat disgusting. Generosity is as painful as meanness, gratitude as hateful as ingratitude.
    George Orwell (1903–1950)

    ‘A thing is called by a certain name because it instantiates a certain universal’ is obviously circular when particularized, but it looks imposing when left in this general form. And it looks imposing in this general form largely because of the inveterate philosophical habit of treating the shadows cast by words and sentences as if they were separately identifiable. Universals, like facts and propositions, are such shadows.
    David Pears (b. 1921)