Free Variables

Famous quotes containing the words free and/or variables:

“To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.”
—Ernest Renan (1823–1892)

“The variables of quantification, ‘something,’ ‘nothing,’ ‘everything,’ range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)