Reasoning Quotes - page 17

Her reasoning is full of tricks And butterfly suggestions, I know no point to which she sticks; She begs the simplest questions, And, when her premises are strong She always draws her inference wrong. (Alfred Cochrane)
[E]verything in the reasoning of the founders pointed inexorably toward the incompatibility of liberty and equality with slavery... View quote
Allen C. Guelzo
The physicist, in his study of natural phenomena, has two methods of making progress: (1) the method of experiment and observation, and (2) the method of mathematical reasoning. The former is just the collection of selected data; the latter enables one to infer results about experiments that have not been performed. There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all, but one has found in practice that it does work and meets with reasonable success. View quote
Paul Dirac
To be against rationalization is not the same as to be opposed to reasoning. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
He claims,' said Jenny tactfully, 'That he flew through a radioactive cloud thirty years ago and that it didn't do him any harm - thus it's all right to mine uranium. A fine piece of Australian political reasoning. View quote
Helen Garner
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed - there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. View quote
Herman Melville
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. View quote
John Stuart Mill
I conceive that the description so often given of a Benthamite, as a mere reasoning machine, though extremely inapplicable to most of those who have been designated by that title, was during two or three years of my life not altogether untrue of me. View quote
John Stuart Mill
The assumption that government must be neutral among conceptions of the good generally appears in cases in which the Court protects speech that government would restrict. But the force of this assumption can also be seen where the Court has upheld restrictions on speech, most notably, in obscenity cases. Although the Court has been reluctant to protect obscenity under the First Amendment, its reasoning in recent obscenity cases displays the powerful influence of neutrality assumptions on constitutional law. View quote
Michael J. Sandel
Human reasoning can never answer the mysteries of our lives. View quote
Caroline Myss
The court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function. (Louis Brandeis)
It is hard to see Judge Roberts as a judicial activist who would place ideological purity or a particular agenda above or ahead the need for thoughtful legal reasoning. View quote
Ron Wyden
It will be necessary to dwell on futile reasoning and visionary hypothesis because the most extravagant systems were often invented or controverted by men of acknowledged talent. View quote
Charles Lyell
Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals ... must be contentwith probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther. View quote
Isaac Watts
Bushido is realized in the presence of death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. There is no other reasoning. View quote
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Although all things are not to be judged in this manner, I mention it in the investigation of the Way of the Samurai. When the time comes, there is no moment for reasoning. And if you have not done your inquiring beforehand, there is most often shame. View quote
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Only an unashamed dogmatist would dare to assert that the issue has finally been resolved now, in favor of the view that, outside logic or mathematics, the method of modern science is the only method to employ in seeking knowledge. The dogmatist who made this assertion would have to be more than ashamed. He would have to blind himself to the fact that his own assertion was not established by the experimental method, nor made as an indisputable conclusion of mathematical reasoning or of purely logical analysis. View quote
Robert Maynard Hutchins
One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes: "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume ... let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." ... the positivists of our own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to dismissal from serious consideration ... Those books ... argue the case against the kind of positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and experimental science is sophistry and illusion. ... The Great Conversation ... contains both sides of the issue. View quote
Robert Maynard Hutchins
You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts nothing else will ever be of any service to them. Stick to Facts, sir. View quote
Charles Dickens
The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. View quote
Novalis
On the May 11 2006 broadcast of The Big Story, Gibson called for caucasians to have more children. His reasoning appeared to be in part to prevent Hispanics from ever being the racial majority in America. It is projected by the U. S. Census Bureau that persons of Hispanic descent will make up well over one-third of the U. S. population by the year 2050. The next day he said that he meant all Americans should have more children. (John Gibson (media host))
To say that basic science is exciting may sound like a contradiction... But I would remind you that there are two intellectual excitements that are not tame at all and that we remember all our lives. One is the thrill of following out a chain of reasoning for yourself; the other is the pleasure of watching several strongly individualistic personalities argue about their deepest convictions. That is to say, the thrill of a detective story and the pleasure of watching a play by George Bernard Shaw. View quote
John R. Platt
Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians, all have the same evidence-the same facts. Think about it: we all have the same earth, the same fossil layers, the same animals and plants, the same stars-the facts are all the same. The difference is in the way we all interpret the facts. And why do we interpret facts differently? Because we start with different presuppositions; these are things that are assumed to be true without being able to prove them. These then become the basis for other conclusions. All reasoning is based on presuppositions (also called axioms). This becomes especially relevant when dealing with past events. View quote
Ken Ham
Philosophy springs from the love of being; it is man's loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune himself to it. Gnosis desires dominion over being; in order to seize control of being the Gnostic constructs his system. The building of systems is a gnostic form of reasoning, not a philosophical one. View quote
Eric Voegelin
All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence. View quote
Coventry Patmore