Reasoning Quotes - Page 16

• Some people pass through life soberly and religiously enough, without knowing way, or reasoning about it, but, from force of habit merely, go to heaven like fools.

  Laurence Sterne

  Knowing, People, Heaven

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• Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning, - nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct.

  Marie Corelli

  Spiritual, Intuition, Logic

  Marie Corelli (2015). “The Master Christian”, p.154, The Floating Press

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• The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into the magic aura are not dealt with rationally but by a specific type of pseudo-reasoning. Absurdities and contradictions are made acceptable by specious rationalizations.

  Arthur Koestler

  Mind, Magic, Atheism

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• Fortunately, there are old terrors and powers that religion no longer can exercise so effectively as it did only a few score years ago. But the atmosphere and the attitude of bigotry remain. If religion cannot ordinarily invoke the armed force of law to punish heretics, it still plays upon the psychology of fear and predominantly its influence is to frighten men and distort their views and poison every process of their reasoning.

  E. Haldeman-Julius

  Attitude, Exercise, Men

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• Any restrictions to freedom of expression will always open the door to possible others, because analogical reasoning can mount arguments showing why this or that class of objects is closely similar to those for which exceptions have been made.

  Randal Marlin

  Doors, Expression, Class

  Randal Marlin (2002). “Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion”, p.230, Broadview Press

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• Logical investigations can obviously be a useful tool for philosophy. They must, however, be informed by a sensitivity to the philosophical significance of the formalism and by a generous admixture of common sense, as well as a thorough understanding both of the basic concepts and of the technical details of the formal material used. It should not be supposed that the formalism can grind out philosophical results in a manner beyond the capacity of ordinary philosophical reasoning. There is no mathematical substitute for philosophy.

  Saul Kripke

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Thorough Understanding

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• I learned early that you'd better know what you're talking about. You'd better realize that certain issues are going to be so hot - no matter what reason, what logic you apply to it - you're going to be met with an opposition just because their viewpoint is different, and there's no way they're going to accept your reasoning. Furthermore, they're going to attack you because you will be portrayed as not being credible: "You're an actor. What do you know?"

  Robert Redford

  Talking, Issues, Hot

  Interview with Sean P. Means, www.sltrib.com. December 02, 2005.

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• Let's say I hope that I appeal to the more carefree times in a person's life rather than to his reasoning adulthood. I'd just like to be an image that reminds someone of joy rather than of the problems of the world.

  John Wayne

  Joy, World, Problem

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• How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule? - Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

  Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury

  Coward, Tests, Ridicule

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• The deeper I go in considering the vanities of popular reasoning, the lighter and more foolish I find them. What greater stupidity can be imagined than that of calling jewels, silver, and gold "precious," and earth and soil "base"?

  Galileo Galilei

  Vanity, Jewels, Stupidity

  Galileo Galilei (1967). “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, Second Revised Edition”, p.59, Univ of California Press

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• The cookbook gives a detailed description of ingredients and procedures but no proofs for its prescriptions or reasons for its recipes; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. ... Mathematics cannot be tested in exactly the same manner as a pudding; if all sorts of reasoning are debarred, a course of calculus may easily become an incoherent inventory of indigestible information.

  George Polya

  Giving, Pudding, Inventory

  "How to Solve It" by George Polya, Expanded Princeton Science Library Edition, (p. 219), 2004.

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• The children of God should not have any other country here below but the universe itself, with the totality of all the reasoning creatures it ever has contained, contains, or ever will contain. That is the native city to which we owe our love.

  Simone Weil

  Love, Country, Children

  Simone Weil (1977). “The Simone Weil Reader”

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• The very reason we need logic at all is because most reasoning is not conscious at all.

  Julian Jaynes

  Needs, Logic, Reason

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It has been argued that dinosaurs did not die out, but just evolved wings and flew away. At a certain level, this reasoning is sound.... Birds, as a group, did descend from dinosaurs and ... all 8,600 species of birds living today carry some inheritance from their reptilian ancestors.

  David M. Raup

  Wings, Bird, Today

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• Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to be positive or dogmatical on any subject; and even if excessive scepticism could be maintained it would not be more destructive to all just reasoning and inquiry. When men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.

  David Hume

  Passion, Men, Being Positive

  David Hume (2016). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Revision of Great Book”, p.213, VM eBooks

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• Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Air, Giving

  David Hume (1854). “The Philosophical Works of David Hume: Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Pub. by the Author”, p.9

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• It were much to be desired, that when mathematical processes pass through the human brain instead of through the medium of inanimate mechanism, it were equally a necessity of things that the reasonings connected with operations should hold the same just place as a clear and well-defined branch of the subject of analysis, a fundamental but yet independent ingredient in the science, which they must do in studying the engine.

  Ada Lovelace

  Independent, Brain, Fundamentals

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• The fondness or indifference that the philosophers expressed for life was merely a preference inspired by their self-love, and will no more bear reasoning upon than the relish of the palate or the choice of colors.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Philosophical, Self, Color

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• If plants could be credited with reasoning powers, we would marvel at the imaginative ways they bribe or ensnare other creatures to carry out their wishes.

  Jane Goodall

  Wish, Way, Plant

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• To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Philosophy, School, May

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• There is required for the composition of a great commander not only massive common sense and reasoning power, not only imagination, but also an element of legerdemain, an original and sinister touch, which leaves the enemy puzzled as well as beaten.

  Winston Churchill

  Common Sense, Imagination, Enemy

  Winston Churchill (2005). “The World Crisis, 1911-1918”, p.293, Simon and Schuster

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• A critic is a person who rationalizes his likes and dislikes in such impressive language that the layman thinks he is reasoning instead of rationalizing.

  Helen McCloy

  Thinking, Likes And Dislikes, Language

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• As the therapeutic relationship is established and progress occurs in problem areas, the therapist can "lead" and "push" the adolescent toward abstract reasoning skill.

  Virgil Miller Newton

  Skills, Progress, Problem

  "Adolescence: Guiding Youth Through the Perilous Ordeal". Book by Miller Newton, 1995.

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• Was it probably true that reasoning beings were equal? It seemed more like a belief than a fact, even if I agreed with it. If you followed logic all the way back to its origin, did you inevitably end up at point of illogic, an article of faith?

  Rachel Hartman

  Way, Facts, Belief

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• [Lord Brougham's writings on the bee's cell contain] as striking examples of bad reasoning as are often to be met with in writings related to mathematical subjects.

  James Whitbread Lee Glaisher

  Writing, Cells, Example

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