Quotes About Reasoning

we form many incorrect beliefs because we have natural tendencies to evaluate evidence in a biased and faulty manner.

It's the quality of our reasons for believing that make us intelligent and thoughtful individuals

What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.

The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions.

Science is simply common sense at its best.

The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.

Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense.

When feelings matter more than rationality or facts, education is a doomed enterprise. Emotion

Principled, informed arguments are a sign of intellectual health and vitality in a democracy.

The most important of these intellectual capabilities, and the one most under attack in American universities, is critical thinking: the ability to examine new information and competing ideas dispassionately, logically, and without emotional or personal preconceptions.

The right thing was confusing, and difficult, and sometimes Jason wondered if it was in fact a nonexistent ideal, like heaven or the American dream. There was no right thing. You did what you did for whatever reasons occurred to you at the time, depending on whichever emotion was running thickest in your blood. Your desire and fear and adrenaline and longing. You made your choice and came up with the reasons later.

Arguing with one who will not accept facts is like administering medicine to the dead.

The defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to point them out.

The existentialists are not irrationalists in the sense that they deny the validity of logical argument and scientific reasoning. They simply question the ability of such reasoning to access the deep personal convictions that guide our lives.

I confess I know not what a sceptic can answer to this, nor by what good argument he can plead even for a hearing; for either his reasoning is sophistry, and so deserves contempt; or there is no truth in the human faculties, and then why should we reason?

In every chain of reasoning, the evidence of the last conclusion can be no greater than that of the weakest link of the chain, whatever may be the strength of the rest.

There is nothing so absurd which some philosophers have not maintained.

And a man who perfectly understood a just syllogism, without believing that the conclusion follows from the premises, would be a greater monster than a man born without hands or feet.

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

Adults who believe in the Little Adult Assumption are going to rely heavily on words and reasons in trying to change the behavior of young kids. And words and reasons are going to be miserable failures much of the time.

The East is more inductive, while the West is more deductive.