This statement vividly expresses W.V.O. Quine's central argument in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951), where he fundamentally critiques two foundational tenets of logical empiricism.

The first dogma Quine attacked was the analytic-synthetic distinction: the idea that statements can be neatly divided into those true by definition (analytic) and those true by empirical fact (synthetic). Quine argued this distinction is ultimately indefensible, as no statement is immune to revision based on experience.

The second dogma was reductionism: the belief that every meaningful statement could be reduced to terms referring to immediate experience. Quine rejected this, proposing a holistic epistemology, where our knowledge forms an interconnected "web of belief."

The quoted statement illustrates this holism. It suggests that no single belief or sentence in our conceptual scheme is immune to revision. If an experience seemingly contradicts a belief, we don't have to abandon that specific belief. Instead, we can choose to make adjustments "elsewhere" in our web—revising other, more peripheral beliefs, or even logical rules, to preserve a central tenet. For example, confronted with apparent evidence contradicting a fundamental scientific law, scientists might first doubt their measurements or auxiliary hypotheses, rather than immediately discarding the law itself. This implies that the truth of statements is not determined in isolation, but by their coherence within the entire system, and our pragmatic choices about which parts to modify when faced with recalcitrant experience.