Reasoning Quotes - Page 5

• Statistics have shown that mortality increases perceptibly in the military during wartime.

  Alphonse Allais

  Funny, Military, Humor

  7 Copy quote

• Anyone who has had actual contact with the making of the inventions that built the radio art knows that these inventions have been the product of experiment and work based on physical reasoning, rather than on the mathematicians' calculations and formulae. Precisely the opposite impression is obtained from many of our present day text books and publications.

  Edwin Howard Armstrong

  Art, Book, Science

  "Electronics" by P. Arun, (p. 310), 2005.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Where faith commences, science ends. Both these arts of the human mind must be strictly kept apart from each other. Faith has its origin in the poetic imagination; knowledge, on the other hand, originates in the reasoning intelligence of man. Science has to pluck the blessed fruits from the tree of knowledge, unconcerned whether these conquests trench upon the poetical imaginings of faith or not.

  Ernst Haeckel

  Faith, Art, Blessed

  Ernst Haeckel (1887). “The History of Creation, Or, The Development of the Earth and Its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes: A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution in General, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in Particular”

  59 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning, and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and where a mathematical reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a Candle standing by you.

  John Arbuthnot

  Success, Knowledge, Dark

  Of the Laws of Chance Preface

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The love of experiment was very strong in him [Charles Darwin], and I can remember the way he would say, "I shan't be easy till I have tried it," as if an outside force were driving him. He enjoyed experimenting much more than work which only entailed reasoning, and when he was engaged on one of his books which required argument and the marshalling of facts, he felt experimental work to be a rest or holiday.

  Francis Darwin

  Strong, Book, Holiday

  Sir Francis Darwin, Charles Darwin (1925). “The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: Including an Autobiographical Chapter”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mathematics is a form of poetry which transcends poetry in that it proclaims a truth; a form of reasoning which transcends reasoning in that it wants to bring about the truth it proclaims; a form of action, of ritual behavior, which does not find fulfilment in the act but must proclaim and elaborate a poetic form of truth.

  Salomon Bochner

  Truth, Science, Doe

  Salomon Bochner “Collected Papers of Salomon Bochner”, American Mathematical Soc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
  A being darkly wise and rudely great...
  He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;
  In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
  In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
  Born to die, and reasoning but to err.

  Alexander Pope

  Wise, Fear, Doubt

  Alexander Pope (1867). “An Essay on Man: In Four Epistles, to H.St.John, Lord Bolingbroke”, p.18

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Interactive computers and software will, I think, provide a less costly method of doing some kinds of inquiry, in knowledge acquisition and even reasoning and interaction.

  Roy Romer

  Thinking, Acquisition, Inquiry

  45 Copy quote

• But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind.

  David Hume

  Art, Reflection, Order

  David Hume, J. B. Schneewind (1983). “An Enquiry Concerning The Principles of Morals”, p.15, Hackett Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Foundation, Facts, Sides

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Morris Raphael Cohen, John Dewey (1968). “Chance, love, and logic philosophical essays”, p.28, Charles Sander Peirce

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Intuition is the discriminative faculty that enables you to decide which of two lines of reasoning is right. Perfect intuition makes you a master of all.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Two, Perfect, Intuition

  21 Copy quote

• When we shrink from the sight of something, when we shroud it in euphemism, that is usually a sign of inner conflict, of unsettled hearts, a sign that something has gone wrong in our moral reasoning.

  Matthew Scully

  Heart, Sight, Gone

  Matthew Scully (2011). “Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy”, p.320, Souvenir Press

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• When an apologist attempts to be autonomous in his reasoned argumentation he indicates that he considers God to be less certain than his own existence and that he places greater credence in his independent reasoning than in God's Word.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  Independent, Certain, Existence

  23 Copy quote

• We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

  James Harvey Robinson

  Believe, Doubt, Resentment

  James Harvey Robinson (1939). “The Mind in the Making”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The circumstances of human society are too complicated to be submitted to the rigor of mathematical calculation.

  Marquis de Custine

  Math, Logic, Complicated

  7 Copy quote

• The creation of rule is more creative than the destruction of them. Creation demands a higher level of reasoning and draws connections between cause and effect. The best rules are never stable or permanent, but evolve naturally according to context or need.

  Andrea Zittel

  Creative, Connections, Needs

  13 Copy quote

• And now, my friend, I am going to expose to you all my weaknesses. All men, I believe, are under a necessity of paying tribute at some time or other to Love, and it is vain to strive to avoid it. I was a philosopher, yet this tyrant of the mind triumphed over all my wisdom; his darts were of greater force than all my reasonings, and with a sweet constraint he led me wherever he pleased.

  Peter Abelard

  Sweet, Believe, Men

  Peter Abelard, Héloïse (2017). “Letters of Abelard and Heloise”, p.40, Litres

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

  Joseph Addison

  Graduation, Education, Depressing

  7 Copy quote

• The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.

  George Washington

  Education, Math, Mind

  George Washington, Stephen Lucas (1999). “The Quotable George Washington: The Wisdom of an American Patriot”, p.57, Rowman & Littlefield

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the questions cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil.

  David Hume

  Determination, Philosophy, Mean

  David Hume (2010). “Moral and Political Philosophy”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and make him something less than a man.

  Arthur Hays Sulzberger

  Men, Data, Giving

  22 Copy quote

• In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Ideas, Issues

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, because they want to comprehend at a glance and are not used to seeking for first principles. Those, on the other hand, who are accustomed to reason from first principles do not understand matters of feeling at all, because they look for first principles and are unable to comprehend at a glance.

  Blaise Pascal

  Math, Hands, Judging

  10 Copy quote

• People in good moods are better at inductive reasoning and creative problem solving.

  Peter Salovey

  Leadership, People, Creative

  14 Copy quote

• Most marvelous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked-for beauty, make flowers bloom even on the brow of the precipice, and, when nothing better can be had, can turn the very substance of rock itself into moss and lichens. This faculty is uncomparingly the most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men.

  Margaret Fuller

  Beauty, Truth, Flower

  5 Copy quote