Reasoning Quotes - Page 29

• The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision rejected Congress' findings and its method of reasoning, .. Is there any real justification for the court's denigrating Congress' 'method of reasoning'?.

  Arlen Specter

  Real, Decision, Congress

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• To be a fully functioning moral agent, one cannot passively accept moral principles handed down by fiat. Moral principles require moral reasoning.

  Michael Shermer

  Agents, Principles, Moral

  Michael Shermer (2005). “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule”, p.16, Macmillan

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• I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.

  David Hume

  Looks, Belief, Opinion

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.244, Delphi Classics

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• Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.

  Mark Twain

  Animal, Men, Thinking

  Mark Twain (1973). “What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings”, p.85, Univ of California Press

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• But that the reasoning from these facts, the drawing from them correct conclusions, is a matter of great difficulty, may be inferred from the imperfect state in which the Science is now found after it has been so long and so intensely studied.

  Nassau William Senior

  Science, Drawing, Long

  Nassau William Senior (1858). “Political Economy”, p.4

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• Your reasoning is excellent, it's only your basic assumptions that are wrong.

  Ashleigh Brilliant

  Assumption, Excellent

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• The quantity of meaning compressed into small space by algebraic signs, is another circumstance that facilitates the reasonings we are accustomed to carry on by their aid.

  Charles Babbage

  Space, Aids, Circumstances

  Charles Babbage (1826). “On the Influence of Signs in Mathematical Reasoning”, p.6

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• In fact the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won't fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Feelings, Facts, Evolution

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• Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

  Winston Churchill

  Math, Logic, Poor

  Winston Churchill (1986). “Closing the Ring”, p.150, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But the need for conflict to expose prejudice and unclear reasoning, which is deeply embedded in my philosophy of science, has its origin in these debates.

  Robert B. Laughlin

  Philosophy, Prejudice, Needs

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• We think of Euclid as of fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.

  Walter Bagehot

  Science, Thinking, Ice

  Walter Bagehot, Richard Holt Hutton (1891). “Literary studies ; Religious and metaphysical essays ; Letters on the French coup d'état”

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• Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith we can argue from another. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections - if he has any - against faith.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Christian, Believe, Mean

  Saint Thomas (Aquinas), Stephen F. Brown (1999). “On Faith and Reason”, p.19, Hackett Publishing

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• I told him that I thought it was law logic - an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in Courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.

  John Quincy Adams

  Law, Justice, Logic

  "Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848". Book by John Quincy Adams, 1875.

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• Eventually man, too, found his way back to the sea. Standing on its shores, he must have looked out upon it with wonder and curiosity, compounded with an unconscious recognition of his lineage. He could not physically re-enter the ocean as the seals and whales had done. But over the centuries, with all the skill and ingenuity and reasoning powers of his mind, he has sought to explore and investigate even its most remote parts, so that he might re-enter it mentally and imaginatively.

  Rachel Carson

  Ocean, Men, Whales

  Rachel Carson (2011). “The Sea Around Us”, p.19, Open Road Media

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• NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate; it can be apprehended only by a process of reasoning - which is a phenomenon.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Process, Latter, Existence

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.151, 谷月社

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• Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

  Mark Twain

  Dog, Cat, Simple

  "Mark Twain’s Book of Animals".

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• I have not come to know atheism as a result of logical reasoning and still less as an event in my life: in me it is a matter of instinct.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Logical Reasoning, Religion, Atheism

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What”, p.19, Friedrich Nietzsche

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• God is love. His plan for creation can only be rooted in love. Does not that simple thought, rather than erudite reasoning, offer solace to the human heart?

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  God, Heart, Simple

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• God lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Children, Writing, Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.60, HarperCollins UK

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• That torture is wrong can never be the conclusion to any line of reasoning because it has to be a fundamental premise. Witnessing to the humanity of the other is the place where all moral reasoning must begin.

  Giles Fraser

  Humanity, Fundamentals, Lines

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• What we take ourselves to be doing when we think about what is the case or how we should act is something that cannot be reconciled with a reductive naturalism, for reasons distinct from those that entail the irreducibility of consciousness. It is not merely the subjectivity of thought but its capacity to transcend subjectivity and to discover what is objectively the case that presents a problem....Thought and reasoning are correct or incorrect in virtue of something independent of the thinker's beliefs, and even independent of the community of thinkers to which he belongs. (p. 71)

  Thomas Nagel

  Independent, Thinking, Community

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False”, p.72, Oxford University Press

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• Like all Holmes' reasoning, the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained. Dr. Watson, speaking of Sherlock Holmes.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Simplicity, Drs, Holmes

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• How different the reasoning is that men adopt when they are discussing the cases of men and those of women.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Men, Different, Cases

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• Many aspects of life cannot be explained through logic or reason. The reasoning part of the mind simply doesn't have the capacity to understand the many whys and how's of being and non-being.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Science, Mind

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• Our imagination and reasoning powers facilitate anxiety; the anxious feeling is precipitated not by an absolute impending threat-such as the worry about an examination, a speech, travel-but rather by the symbolic and often unconscious representations.

  Willard Gaylin

  Worry, Imagination, Anxiety

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