William James Quotes About Logic

Quotes about: Logic

• The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.

  William James

  Art, Mistake, Teaching

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.15, Harvard University Press

• Instinct leads, logic does but follow.

  William James

  Intuition, Doe, Logic

• General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.

  William James

  Attitude, Details, Logic

  William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.75, 谷月社

• We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we give another example of the same fact. This offering a similar instance, instead of a reason, has often been criticised as one of the forms of logical depravity in men. But manifestly it is not a perverse act of thought, but only an incomplete one. Furnishing parallel cases is the necessary first step towards abstracting the reason imbedded in them all.

  William James

  Science, Men, Offering

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