Famous quotes containing the words burr and/or van:
“Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To call a posit a posit is not to patronize it. A posit can be unavoidable except at the cost of other no less artificial expedients. Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)