Reasoning Quotes - Page 24

• Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way, Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.

  William Cowper

  Mistake, Men, Intuition

  William Cowper, Henry Stebbing (1843). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper, Esq: Including the Hymns and Translations from Madame Guion, Milton, Etc., and Adam; a Sacred Drama; from the Italian of Gio. Battista Andreini, with a Memoir of the Author”, p.183

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• The line has magnitude in one way, the plane in two ways, and the solid in three ways, and beyond these there is no other magnitude because the three are all.

  Aristotle

  Two, Three, Ontology

  "On the Heavens". Treatise by Aristotle (Book 1), 350 BC.

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• In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy.

  Francis Crick

  Math, Lazy, Logic

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• Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.

  David Hume

  Sentimental, Vain, Cases

  David Hume (2012). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, p.4, Courier Corporation

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• The physicist, in his study of natural phenomena, has two methods of making progress: (1) the method of experiment and observation, and (2) the method of mathematical reasoning. The former is just the collection of selected data; the latter enables one to infer results about experiments that have not been performed. There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all, but one has found in practice that it does work and meets with reasonable success.

  Paul Dirac

  Math, Practice, Data

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• The world is too big and too intricate to conform to our ideas of what it should be like... Just because we invent myths and theories to explain away the chaos we're still going to live in a world that's older and more complicated than we'll ever understand.

  Moby

  Ideas, World, Ontology

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• If we base our belief systems on the humble assumption that the complexities of the world are ontologically beyond our understanding, then maybe our belief systems will make more sense and end up causing less suffering.

  Moby

  Humble, Understanding, Suffering

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• Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

  Roger Bacon

  Mind, Doe, Path

  1267 Opus Majus (translated by Robert Belle Burke, 1928).

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• Although I am not stupid, the mathematical side of my brain is like dumb notes upon a damaged piano.

  Margot Asquith

  Stupid, Math, Piano

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• A good proof is one that makes us wiser.

  IU?. I. Manin

  Ontology, Logic, Proof

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• It is well known that the central problem of the whole of modern mathematics is the study of transcendental functions defined by differential equations.

  Felix Klein

  Ontology, Logic, Study

  Felix Klein (1893). “The Evanston Colloquium: Lectures on Mathematics Delivered from Aug. 28 to Sept. 9, 1893 Before Members of the Congress of Mathematics Held in Connection with the World's Fair in Chicago at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill”

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• Those who pretend to investigate the transcendental truths of the Being based on pure reasoning fall in the same mistake as someone who, ignoring how to use the science's modern instruments, tries to study the life of what is infinitely small with telescopes and the life of what is infinitely large with microscopes.

  Samael Aun Weor

  Mistake, Fall, Trying

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• In my paper the fact the XY was not equal to YX was very disagreeable to me. I felt this was the only point of difficulty in the whole scheme...and I was not able to solve it.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Paper, Ontology, Able

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• When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper...the fountain of all thought has been opened to him...the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Distance, Boys, Two

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• I had a feeling once about mathematics - that I saw it all... but it was after dinner and I let it go.

  Winston Churchill

  Math, Feelings, Let It Go

  Winston Churchill (2010). “My Early Life: 1874-1904”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• I think I think, therefore I think I am.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Math, Thinking, Logic

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• A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.

  Alexis Carrel

  Truth, Errors, Littles

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• I shall devote all my efforts to bring light into the immense obscurity that today reigns in Analysis. It so lacks any plan or system, that one is really astonished that there are so many people who devote themselves to it - and, still worse, it is absolutely devoid of any rigor.

  Niels Henrik Abel

  Light, People, Effort

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• All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know.

  Alexis Carrel

  Greatness, Men, Intuition

  "Nava-Vēda: God and Man" by M. B. Raja Rao, p. 229, 1968.

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• Consequentialist theories pretend that we can set some great big ends (the general happiness, human flourishing), provide ourselves with definite enough conceptions of them to make them the objects of instrumental reasoning, and then obtain enough reliable information about what actions will best promote them that we could regulate our conduct by these considerations alone.

  Allen W. Wood

  Information, Action, Enough

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• We cannot predict the effects of our actions, especially our collective actions over generations or centuries, to use instrumental reasoning toward these big final ends to tell us what we ought to do.

  Allen W. Wood

  Finals, Generations, Use

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• It is rational to choose the right means to your ends to develop very elegant abstract formal theories of rational choice, and then turn these into what look like moral theories. Philosophers tend to be ravished by the formal beauty of such theories, and they don't pay much attention to the fact that our human limitations make them pretty useless in practice, while the simple point about instrumental reasoning is too shallow to be of much real moral interest.

  Allen W. Wood

  Real, Mean, Simple

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Why should you be bogged down with my titles and how I thought about it and my poetic reasoning? No, that's not necessary. Either you're going to be drawn into it [or not]. It's a black hole; gravity should pull you in and you should have that experience.

  Leonardo Drew

  Should Have, Black, Titles

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Always follow these two rules: first, act only on what your reasoning mind proposes for the good of humanity, and second, change your opinion if someone shows you it's wrong. This change of mind must proceed only from the conviction that it's both correct and for the common good, but not because it will give you pleasure and make you popular.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Two, Giving, Community

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• There you have it: an expensive higher education based on sloganeering, on pat, trite phrases that substitute moral posturing for political reasoning. It's elitism masquerading as egalitarianism.

  Camille Paglia

  Egalitarianism, Political, Phrases

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