Quotes About Reasoning

Not everything that makes deductive sense may be true.b But if it doesn't fit into a syllogism, Aristotle concluded, then don't bother asking if it's true or not.

All of Aristotle's works point out, however, that the most vital knowledge we have comes a posteriori, meaning "after the fact" or from experience, as we link up a given visible effect to its preceding cause.

Redeneren wordt je dood. Het is overleven op intuitie of anders niet. Geloof me, bij een leven als dit moet je niet te lang stilstaan.

Se considera insoluble este misterio por las mismas razones que deberían inducir a considerarlo solucionable. (E. A. Poe. Los crímenes de la calle Morgue)

Bajo un dios injusto y temible, un devoto apacible es alguien que no ha razonado en absoluto...

The moving power of mathematical invention is not reasoning but imagination.

Prejudice is the reasoning of fools.

Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick and shovel.

Those who deny the first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped.

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

People had contested the whole basis of the idea of God's power on earth, and they had done it with reasoning that was beautiful and compelling. Darwin said creation stories were a fairy tale. Freud said we had power over ourselves. Spinoza said there were no miracles, no angels, no need to pray to anything outside ourselves: God was us, and nature. Emil Durkheim said humans fantasized religion to give themselves a sense of security.

The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive.

What is a demanding pleasure that demands the use of ones mind! Not in the sense of problem solving, but in the sense of exercising discrimination, judgment, awareness.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

The greatest enjoyment possible to man was that which this philosophy promises its votaries--the pleasure of being always right, and always reasoning--without ever being bound to look at anything.

Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational.

It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

I'm very rational, so sometimes I need the facts, and if I don't have the facts, then I get huffy, and I move on.

To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization.

I think that we must find some way to get more common sense, more rationality, in our decisions and less emotion.

You cannot 'rationalize' what is not rational to begin with - as if lying were called 'truthization.' There is no way to obtain more truth for a proposition by bribery, flattery, or the most passionate argument - you can make more people believe the proposition, but you cannot make it more true.

My mother cared more about how you reasoned than about the conclusions you reached.

I don't feel like emotion has place in a debate, because emotion doesn't encourage rational debate - it shuts it down. It supplants rational debate with quick, emotional reactions.

I want to read philosophers.