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Reasoning Quotes

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Reasoning Quotes

“Wherever the human mind is healthy and vigorous in all its proportions, great in imagination and emotion no less than in intellect, and not overborne by an undue or hardened pre-eminence of the mere reasoning faculties, there the grotesque will exist in full energy.”

MindHumansEnergyImaginationEmotionHealthyMereIntellectReasoningProportionFacultyHuman MindVigorousGrotesqueHardenedEminence
Book:The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings
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“It is, indeed, right that we should look for, and hasten, so far as in us lies, the coming of the day of God; but not that we should check any human effort by anticipations of its approach. We shall hasten it best by endeavoring to work out the tasks that are appointed for us here; and, therefore, reasoning as if the world were to continue under its existing dispensation, and the powers which have just been granted to us were to be continued through myriads of future ages.”

IfsWorldShouldHumansLooksAgeLyingEffortApproachTasksWork OutChecksGrantedReasoningAnticipationMillennium
Book:The Stones of Venice
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“He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.”

WorldNeedsSelfUseDecisionPlansMaterialsActivityJudgmentDecidedDiscriminationObservationReasoningFacultyPortionsSelf ControlImitationDeliberateApesFirmness
Book:On Liberty
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“Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to be positive or dogmatical on any subject; and even if excessive scepticism could be maintained it would not be more destructive to all just reasoning and inquiry. When men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.”

IfsMenPassionGivenSubjectsSecureSuspenseReasoningDestructiveArrogantAbsurdityMistakenInquiryBeing PositiveReinsDeliberationDogmatismScepticism
Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Revision of Great Book
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“Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.”

GivingPersonsReasonPhilosophyAbleAirCatholicReasoningSuperstitionsAccurateRemedyDispositionMetaphysicalCarelessJargon
Book:The Philosophical Works of David Hume: Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Pub. by the Author
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“Let us confess a truth, humiliating to human pride; - a very small part only of the opinions of the coolest philosopher are the result of fair reasoning; the rest are formed by his education, his temperament, by the age in which he lives, by trains of thought directed to a particular track through some accidental association - in short, by prejudice.”

HumansAgeResultsOpinionParticularPrideFairsPrejudiceTrainTrackPhilosopherReasoningLive ByAssociationTemperamentHumiliatingSmall PartsTrain Of Thought
Book:Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose
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“The culture and educational system of the contemporary West are based almost exclusively upon the training of the reasoning brain and, to a lesser degree, of the aesthetic emotions. Most of us have forgotten that we are not only brain and will, senses and feelings; we are also spirit. Modern man has for the most part lost touch with the truest and highest aspect of himself; and the result of this inward alienation can be seen all too plainly in his restlessness, his lack of identity and his loss of hope.”

MenFeelingsSpiritCultureLostLossResultsEmotionBrainModernIdentityDegreesHighestTrainingAspectWestForgottenEducationalSensesContemporaryReasoningAestheticInwardAlienationTruestRestlessnessEducational SystemModern ManHis Loss
Author:Kallistos Ware
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“TEF is predicated on logic, a simple wager that every human faces: If a reasoning human being loves and values life, they will want to live as long as possible-the desire to be immortal. Nevertheless, it's impossible to know if they're going to be immortal once they die. To do nothing doesn't help the odds of attaining immortality-since it seems evident that everyone will die someday and possibly cease to exist. To try to do something scientifically constructive towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical conclusion.”

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Author:Zoltan Istvan
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“Zen wants us to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature. This is because Zen has come to the definite conclusion that the ordinary logical process of reasoning is powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs.”

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Book:An Introduction to Zen Buddhism
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“Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.”

MenMindHumansEndsSeemsMightOrderFieldsPossibilityBreathsAbsurdHuman LifeReasoningEthicalFormalUnreasonableIllustrationEmanateLife And TimeLuciditySisyphusMyth Of Sisyphus
Book:The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays
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“The goal of a definition is to introduce a mathematical object. The goal of a theorem is to state some of its properties, or interrelations between various objects. The goal of a proof is to make such a statement convincing by presenting a reasoning subdivided into small steps each of which is justified as an "elementary" convincing argument.”

StatesGoalStepsObjectsArgumentMathematicsPropertyDefinitionsVariousProofStatementsMathematicalReasoningIntroducingJustifiedConvincingPresentingTheoremsSmall Steps
Author:IU?. I. Manin
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“Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosophy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary.”

IfsMenBelieveSometimesReasonPhilosophyStarsChallengesBrainProgressDangerousTheoryBlindMereCornersReasoningCriticizeMistakenItemsCorrectionsLiablePrevailingReactionariesBlind FaithMisledGuiding Stars
Book:To make the deaf hear: ideology and programme of Bhagat Singh and his comrades
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“If we rely on anything else besides faith to maintain the practice of the presence of God, we will certainly fail, whether this is our feelings, or experiences, or sincerity, or good intentions, or reasonings, or plans. The reason these things will fail while faith will not fail is that all these things depend on us, while faith depends on God. It is a gift of God.”

IfsReasonFeelingsPracticePlansFailingDependsIntentionRelyReasoningSincerityGood IntentionsGift From GodPresence Of God
Book:Prayer for Beginners
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“Perhaps the most remarkable thing I found about the Bible was how flexible it is. Here we have a book written 3,000 years ago, with bizarre stories, peculiar laws, erratic deity, and yet we are able - through argument, selective reading, and desire - to find a powerful framework of laws and moral reasoning that have built a very successful society. So this Bible, for all its oddities and flaws, serves us beautifully after all these years.”

YearsBookStoriesAbleLawDesireReadingFoundPowerfulMoralSuccessfulWrittenBuiltYears AgoArgumentReasoningRemarkableFlawsPeculiarBizarreFlexibleDeitiesFrameworkSelectiveErraticOdditiesMoral Reasoning
Author:David Plotz
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“Reasoning is compared to understanding as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession.... Since movement always proceeds from something immovable, and ends in something at rest, hence it is that human reasoning, in the order of inquiry and discovery, proceeds from certain things absolutely understood--namely, the first principles; and, again, in the order of judgment, returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. Now it is clear that rest and movement are not to be referred to different powers, but to one and the same.”

FirstsHumansDifferentEndsReasonLightCertainOrderFoundUnderstandingPrinciplesClearMovementReturnJudgmentUnderstoodDiscoveryPossessionAnalysisReasoningInquiryAcquisition
Author:Thomas Aquinas
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”

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Book:Occasions and protests
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“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”

RealShowsRealityCommunityResultsInformationLimitsCapableIncreaseIndependentNotionReasoningConceptionRealismSooner Or LaterDefinitePragmatismReality Shows
Book:Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)
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“Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus "theoretically," is to uselanguage in a Pickwickian sense. In practice, and in fact, mathematics is not exempt from that liability to error that affects everything that man does.”

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Book:Reasoning and the logic of things: the Cambridge conferences lectures of 1898
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“The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way.”

WayStatesFormForceMankindDangerousOughtAuthorityMassMethodVariousConvincedReasoningOrganized
Book:The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)
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“I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.”

MindMeanDoeEndsReasonWholeLightOrderFoundProcessDifferencesAttentionReaderExerciseLaborEmbraceIntuitionFulfillmentComplexityReasoningFacultyMeans To An EndArgumentation
Book:The Ascent to Truth
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“Reasoning from the common course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the Supreme Cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy; what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth: And if the former existence noways concerned us, neither will the latter.”

IfsSoulPhilosophyCoursesCausesCommonExistenceOughtBirthConcernedSupremeFormerImmortalityReasoningLatterImmortalExcludedSupposing
Book:The Philosophical Works of David Hume ... Containing Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Essays on the Immortality of the Soul, Suicide ... &c. A New Edition
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“For God to be kept out of the classroom or out of America's public debate by nervous school administrators or overcautious politicians serves no one's interests. That restriction prevents people from drawing on this country's rich and diverse religious heritage for guidance, and it degrades the nation's moral discourse by placing a whole realm of theological reasoning out of bounds. The price of that sort of quarantine, at a time of moral dislocation, is - and has been - far too high.”

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Author:Nancy Gibbs
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“It is difficult to distinguish deduction from what in other circumstances is called problem-solving. And concept learning, inference, and reasoning by analogy are all instances of inductive reasoning. (Detectives typically induce, rather than deduce.) None of these things can be done separately from each other, or from anything else. They are pseudo-categories.”

DoneProblemDifficultCircumstancesConceptsInstanceReasoningCategoriesProblem SolvingDetectivesAnalogiesPseudoDeductionsInference
Book:To Think: In Language, Learning and Education
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