Quotes About Reasoning

In my opinion we must first of all make the following distinction: what is it that always is and has no becoming, and what on the other hand becomes continually and never is? The one comprehensible by the mind with reasoning, the other conjectured by opinion with irrational sensation, coming to be and passing away, but never really being.

Antes andaba vacilante por uno y otro lado, y creyendo llevar una vida racional, era el más desgraciado de los hombres.

The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics.

The genius of most men lay in finding reasons after their actions. The heart was ever self-serving, especially when the beliefs served involved sacrifice.

An ecstasy of ink, every paragraph laboring to outline the shape of the world. The yellow light of a lamp on leaves of paper, the ivory-black impress of words reasoning, line by line.

Why, when the rabbis wished to understand God's will or Augustine the construction of man's soul, did they not reason as Descartes did, taking nothing as given? Must true inquiry proceed from texts and traditions already established, or could the mind on its own perceive all it needed to fathom the world? And which path of inquiry led more straightly to truth? The

Life would be easy if common sense ruled; but sometimes the easy way doesn't feel like the right way.

Instinct is an animal faculty, independent of instruction and reasoning, but far inferior to intuition, which is a grace unique to humanity.

Intuition was the highest form of knowledge, antecedent to all teaching, not reliant on reasoning.

MATHEMATICIAN

Even if Aristotle was not an atheist in the sense that he directly and openly attacked the divine . . . one could say that he was one in a broader sense, because his ideas on divinity indirectly tend to undermine it and destroy it.

Very often the reason that people reach faulty conclusions is not their inability to reason; it is that they reason from faulty premises.

Don't raise your voice- improve your argument.

That's simple. You reason with them, and when you're through, I'll take them out and thrash them.

The mind is the effect, not the cause.

The great characteristic of the mathematical mind is its capacity for dealing with abstractions; and for eliciting from them clear-cut demonstrative trains of reasoning, entirely satisfactory so long as it is those abstractions which you want to think about.

Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form

Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.

I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road he is at a stand. Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub. (from a letter dated 25 May, 1694)

I can calculate the motion of heavily bodies , but not the madness of people.

Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals. . . must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther.

basic difference in judgment arises from the existence of two distinct and sharply contrasting ways of coming to conclusions. One way is by the use of thinking, that is, by a logical process, aimed at an impersonal finding. The other is by feeling, that is, by appreciation—equally reasonable in its fashion—bestowing on things a personal, subjective value.