"A priori" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for its development. They quitted the world of materiality they inhabited, refused to examine the development of mind as the effect of an existing cause; and at one bold push, entered the world of thought, and made the unhallowed attempt to reason, a priori, concerning things which can only be known by their manifestations. But they soon found themselves in a strange land, confused with sights and sounds unknown, in the explanation of which they, of course, choose terms as unintelligible to their readers, as the ideal ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... accurate distribution of political powers. In living, energetic communities, where the blood of the body politic circulates swiftly, there is an inevitable tendency of the different organs to sympathize and commingle more closely than a priori philosophy would allow. It is usually more desirable than practicable to keep the executive, legislative, and judicial departments entirely independent of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from a foreign tongue. The number of primitive alphabets is so few, the diversity of languages so great, that nearly all tongues must have adopted foreign alphabets. I cannot therefore understand the almost a priori objections raised by the learned.... Do you attend to Indian affairs? The disbanding of our Native Indian armies, the prospect of a sure surplus in the Indian treasury, with the necessity of a conciliatory policy to all the Indian princes as soon as we are disarmed, seem to me as ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... up for no judge, Mr. Sutherland, I assure you; and perhaps I shall do my opinions more justice by remaining silent, seeing I am conscious of utter inability to answer the a priori arguments which you in particular have brought against them. All I would venture to say is, that an a priori argument may owe its force to a mistaken hypothesis with regard to the matter in question; ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Tyndall and Herbert Spencer, derided this new branch of knowledge; but when I learned that their derision had reached such a point that they would not even examine it, and that Spencer had declared in so many words that he had decided against it on a priori grounds, while Huxley had said that it did not interest him, I was bound to admit that, however great, they were in science, their action in this respect was most unscientific and dogmatic, while ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... conclusions of any value for practice can be arrived at by direct experience. All true political science is, in one sense of the phrase, a priori, being deduced from the tendencies of things, tendencies known either through our general experience of human nature, or as the result of an analysis of the course of history, considered as a ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the a priori case for supposing, what our experience of contemporary life abundantly verifies, that the so-called representative assemblies of the world are not really representative at all. I will go farther and say ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... be good evidence of the great antiquity of the legends recorded by Hesiod. In the first place, arguing merely a priori, it is extremely improbable that in the brief interval between the date of the comparatively pure and noble mythology of the Iliad and the much ruder Theogony of Hesiod men INVENTED stories like the mutilation of ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... against evidence of facts, is wholly unwarrantable. It is a mode of reasoning which will not do in natural history, which will not do in natural religion, which cannot therefore be applied with safety to revelation. It may have same foundation in certain speculative a priori ideas of the divine attributes, but it has none in experience or in analogy. The general character of the works of nature is, on the one hand, goodness both in design and effect; and, on the other hand, a liability ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... interdiction; que leurs institutions, leurs ceremonies sont semblables; que leurs croyances sont foncierement identiques; qu'ils ont le meme culte, les memes coutumes, les memes usages principaux; qu'ils ont enfin les memes moeurs et les memes traditions. Tout semble donc, a priori, annoncer que, quelque soit leur eloignement les uns des autres, les Polynesiens ont tire d'une meme source cette communaute d'idees et de langage; qu'ils ne sont, par consequent, que les tribus ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... subtle, of the physical conformation of the Jew could have suggested a priori, and still less could have proved, apart from ages of practical experience, that, running parallel with any physical characteristics which may distinguish him from his fellows, was an innate and unique intellectual gift in the direction of religion. ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... acted on. The very delicate half tints do not, generally, stand a temperature higher than 35 deg. C. (95 deg. Fahr.), and, therefore, as the degree of insolubility of the various parts cannot be ascertained, a priori, it is advisable during the development to increase gradually the temperature of the water from this degree, and not to exceed 45 deg. C. (113 deg. Fahr.), in order to obtain the most perfect result ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... modern writer says, "We should not now, h priori, expect that the Incarnate Logos would be born without a human father," we may reply that we are hardly in a position to expect anything a priori in the matter; but when once we have learnt that this Incarnate Logos was to be the Second Head of the human race—the sinless Son of Man—and that in Him humanity was to make a fresh start, it is indeed difficult to ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... that the whole was designed by a single man, there being no subsequent additions, as there are, for instance, at Chatsworth and Wentworth. Vanbrugh is responsible for good and bad qualities alike. One would imagine a priori that he had everything in his favor—unlimited money and a free hand. Far from this being the case, the stupendous work was accomplished under difficulties greater than any long-suffering architect ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... that the history of many nominally Christian States, including that of the United States, and not excluding the Papacy, includes chapters of aggression. But the point involved, namely, the charge of England's aggression in the present instance, is clearly an a priori one, based on a presupposition of monopoly which lacks material support. No evidence is presented to justify the statement, nor do the facts seem to allow ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... which is impossible is untrue, useless, unjust. Then,—a priori,—we may judge of the justice of any thing by its possibility; so that if the thing were absolutely impossible, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... 3.05 A priori knowledge that a thought was true would be possible only it its truth were recognizable from the thought itself (without anything a ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... reflection, the lights in which the whole moral world has been regarded by different thinkers and successive generations of men. If we ask: Which of these many theories is the true one? we may answer: All of them—moral sense, innate ideas, a priori, a posteriori notions, the philosophy of experience, the philosophy of intuition—all of them have added something to our conception of Ethics; no one of them is the whole truth. But to decide how far our ideas of morality are derived from one source or another; to determine ...
— Philebus • Plato
... to show the location of the main and triumphal entrance to Praeneste, we shall turn to the town above for a moment to see whether it is, a priori, reasonable to suppose that there was an entrance to the city here in the center of its front wall. If roads came up a grade from the east and west, they would join at a point where now there is no wall at all. This break is in the center of ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... adorned with railes and baristers. There are two if not three elevations or ascents to it: the uppermost is adorned with terrasses, on which are railes and baristers of freestone. It faceth the river Avon, which lies south of it, about two furlongs distant: on the north side is a high hill. Now, a priori, I doe conclude that if one were on the south side of the river opposite to this elegant house, that there must of necessity be a good echo returned from the house; and probably if one stand east or west from the house at a due distance, ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... to ascertain the effects of ceasing motion has never been made. Without wishing to exclude a priori the hypothesis which it may be possible to establish, therefore, we observe only that, as a rule, this effect cannot be supposed to be an alteration in the state of aggregation of the moved (that is, rubbing, etc.) bodies. If we assume that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams |
