“I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, "Here is one hand," and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left, "and here is another." And if, by doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things, you will all see that I can also do it now in numbers of other ways: there is no need to multiply examples.”

—  G. E. Moore

"Proof of an External World," Proceedings of the British Academy 25 (1939).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a cer…" by G. E. Moore?
G. E. Moore photo
G. E. Moore 3
British philosopher 1873–1958

Related quotes

Isa Genzken photo
Ben Harper photo

“I can change the world
With my own two hands
Make a better place
With my own two hands
Make a kinder place.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

With My Own Two Hands.
Song lyrics, Diamonds on the Inside (2003)

John Flanagan photo
David Levithan photo
Agatha Christie photo

“I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands… But on the other hand, I am the law!”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)
Context: I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.

George Rogers Clark photo

“I carry in my right hand war, and peace in my left… Here is a bloody belt and a white one. Take which you please.”

George Rogers Clark (1752–1818) American general

Clark, Speech to the Indian Chiefs at Cahokia (1778) http://www.kdla.ky.gov/resources/KYGRClark.htm

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.”

Reflections on a chestnut tree root.
Nausea (1938)
Context: Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.

Mark Hopkins (educator) photo

Related topics