Reasoning Quotes - Page 14

• If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world

  Vannevar Bush

  Understanding, World, Logical

  Vannevar Bush (1946). “Endless horizons”

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• Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosophy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary.

  Bhagat Singh

  Stars, Philosophy, Believe

  S. Irfan Habib, Bhagat Singh (2007). “To make the deaf hear: ideology and programme of Bhagat Singh and his comrades”

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• Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Spring, Expression, Ideas

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.89, Editions Le Mono

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• Perhaps the most remarkable thing I found about the Bible was how flexible it is. Here we have a book written 3,000 years ago, with bizarre stories, peculiar laws, erratic deity, and yet we are able - through argument, selective reading, and desire - to find a powerful framework of laws and moral reasoning that have built a very successful society. So this Bible, for all its oddities and flaws, serves us beautifully after all these years.

  David Plotz

  Powerful, Book, Reading

  "Biblically Speaking". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

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• Reasoning is compared to understanding as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession.... Since movement always proceeds from something immovable, and ends in something at rest, hence it is that human reasoning, in the order of inquiry and discovery, proceeds from certain things absolutely understood--namely, the first principles; and, again, in the order of judgment, returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. Now it is clear that rest and movement are not to be referred to different powers, but to one and the same.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Light, Discovery, Order

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• Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Illustration, Order

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.68, Vintage

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• The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Logical Reasoning, Long

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• Both induction and deduction, reasoning from the particular and the general, and back again from the universal to the specific, form the essence to scientific thinking.

  Hans Christian von Baeyer

  Thinking, Essence, Form

  Hans Christian Von Baeyer (2004). “Information: The New Language of Science”, p.138, Harvard University Press

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• Mathematical Reasoning is not only exact; it has its own criteria of reality.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Reality, Criteria, Mathematical

  "Science in a Free Society". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1978.

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• As an exercise of the reasoning faculties, pure mathematics is an admirable exercise, because it consists of reasoning alone and does not encumber the student with any exercise of judgment.

  Richard Whately

  Exercise, Doe, Students

  Francis Bacon, Richard Whately (1858). “The Essays ... Revised ... by Thomas Markby ... Second edition”, p.495

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• As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.

  Richard Whately

  Art, Mind, Principles

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• The body moves naturally, automatically, unconsciously, without any personal intervention or awareness. But if we begin to use our faculty of reasoning, our actions become slow and hesitant.

  Jaimal Yogis

  Moving, Use, Body

  Mu Soeng, Jaimal Yogis (2010). “Saltwater Buddha: A Surfers Quest to Find Zen on the Sea (Large Print 16pt)”, p.73, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• There is nothing wrong with people that reasoning with them won't aggravate!

  Sam Horn

  People

  Sam Horn (2004). “Tongue Fu! at School: 30 Ways to Get Along Better with Teachers, Principals, Students, and Parents”, p.98, Taylor Trade Publications

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• The culture and educational system of the contemporary West are based almost exclusively upon the training of the reasoning brain and, to a lesser degree, of the aesthetic emotions. Most of us have forgotten that we are not only brain and will, senses and feelings; we are also spirit. Modern man has for the most part lost touch with the truest and highest aspect of himself; and the result of this inward alienation can be seen all too plainly in his restlessness, his lack of identity and his loss of hope.

  Kallistos Ware

  Educational, Loss, Men

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• Reason cannot show itself more reasonable than to cease reasoning on things above reason.

  Philip Sidney

  Reason, Shows, Cease

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• TEF is predicated on logic, a simple wager that every human faces:
  If a reasoning human being loves and values life, they will want to live as long as possible-the desire to be immortal. Nevertheless, it's impossible to know if they're going to be immortal once they die. To do nothing doesn't help the odds of attaining immortality-since it seems evident that everyone will die someday and possibly cease to exist. To try to do something scientifically constructive towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical conclusion.

  Zoltan Istvan

  Simple, Odds, Long

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• Zen wants us to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature. This is because Zen has come to the definite conclusion that the ordinary logical process of reasoning is powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Spiritual, Nature, Views

  D.T. Suzuki (2007). “An Introduction to Zen Buddhism”, p.45, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The best road to correct reasoning is by physical science; the way to trace effects to causes is through physical science; the only corrective, therefore, of superstition is physical science.

  Frances Wright

  Science, Superstitions, Way

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures”, p.66

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• Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason.

  Moliere

  Learning, Past, Reason

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• The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Way, Authority, States

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Nathan Houser, Christian J.W. J. W. Kloesel (1992). “The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)”, p.121, Indiana University Press

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• It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency toward an agreement between the ideas which suggest themselves to the human mind and those which are concerned in the laws of nature.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Agreement, Law, Ideas

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers”, p.33, Harvard University Press

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• I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Exercise, Light

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Ascent to Truth”, p.213, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Reasoning from the common course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the Supreme Cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy; what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth: And if the former existence noways concerned us, neither will the latter.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Soul, Causes

  David Hume (1824). “The Philosophical Works of David Hume ... Containing Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Essays on the Immortality of the Soul, Suicide ... &c. A New Edition”, p.116

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• We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but 'tis vain to ask. Whether there be body or not? That is a point which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.

  David Hume

  Believe, Causes, Body

  David Hume (2016). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Revision of Great Book”, p.180, VM eBooks

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• The result of the mathematician's creative work is demonstrative reasoning, a proof; but the proof is discovered by plausible reasoning, by guessing.

  George Polya

  Science, Creative, Guessing

  "Induction and Analogy in Mathematics". Book by George Polya, 1954.

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