Reference Class

Famous quotes containing the words reference and/or class:

“Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)