- Lived:
- 1839–1914 · Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Milford, Pennsylvania
- Tradition:
- American pragmatism — which he founded, then watched being carried off by his friends
- The Big Idea:
- The meaning of an idea is the difference it would make in practice — and truth is what a community of honest inquirers would finally agree on if the questioning never stopped.
- In their words:
- "Do not block the way of inquiry."
- If you remember one thing:
- Perhaps the greatest mind America ever produced founded three fields — pragmatism, semiotics, and modern logic — and died in poverty, unread, while his best idea made another man famous.