Quotes About Reasoning

One reason I find anthropic reasoning troublesome is that no one yet knows what might be essential to any possible form of life or even to structures such as galaxies that might support it. I am not as confident as others seem to be that any form of life would be similar to ours.

Conscience is a formidable and determined adversary. By nature, it strikes the weakest point in a man's reasoning. His

Conscience is a formidable and determined adversary. By nature, it strikes the weakest point in a man's reasoning.

In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.

He would be laughed at, that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger, at past fifty. And he will not have much better success, who shall endeavour, at that age, to make a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory.

Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.

Hunting after arguments to make good one side of a question, and wholly to neglect and refuse those which favor the other side ... [is] willfully to misguide the understanding; and is so far from giving truth its due value, it wholly debases it.

And thanks to Christina McMullen, who has taught me that common sense and intelligence need not have any correlation whatsoever.

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension.

I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.

Anger is seldom without argument but seldom with a good one.

Consider what you think justice requires, and decide accordingly. But never give your reasons; for your judgment will probably be right, but your reasons will certainly be wrong.

Razum joj je govorio da za njegovo ponašanje mora postojati nekakav glup, tipi?no muški razlog koji ?e ona prije ili kasnije razumijeti, i da ?e se pokazati kako sve to nije imalo nikakve veze s pokušajem da joj povrijedi osje?aje, ili da u?ini da se osjeti neželjenom, ili poduzme da je obuzmu bilo kakve druge mra?ne primisli kakve je trenuta?no proživljavala.

Their philosophy was that you should not always trust your senses and sense experience in order to understand the world, but should rely ultimately on logic and mathematics.

Where instinct fails, intellect must venture.

I hate it when the real world ignores a perfectly logical, rational assumption.

Ad hominem is a notoriously weak logical argument. And is usually used to distract the focus of a discussion - to move it from an indefensible point and to attack the opponent. ~ Lord Aquitainus Attis ~ Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher

I look at things and think about them,' Folly replied. 'And use my intuition, of course, and deduction and induction, as well as any historical or theoretical models that seem to apply.

Handling temper tantrums requires parents with soft voices who don't even try to reason with their misbehaving child.

I invent a reason for the Hertz attendant to start the rental car. I am seventy-five years old: this is not the reason I give.

Investigating is a process of elimination. You have to explore all the possibilities, and whatever's left, no matter how implausible, has got to be it.

When a woman wants to betray her husband, her actions are almost invariably studied but they are never reasoned

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.