“Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification.”— Rudolf Carnap
“For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.”— Arthur Eddington
“I think that it is a relatively good approximation to truth... that mathematical ideas originate in empirics.”— John von Neumann
“You can be a good empiricist only if you are prepared to work with many alternative theories rather than with a single point of view.”— Paul Feyerabend
“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished?”— John Locke
“We should not be led by the vulgar Opinions, nor by the Authority of a few, but by the Sense and Experience of the generality of Mankind.”— William Petty
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs... is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges.”— Willard Van Orman Quine
“Two dogmas of empiricism have been challenged. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience.”— Willard Van Orman Quine