Philosophy & Thought: Reason & Logic Quotes

"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world"

Michael Crichton, Author

"Indeed, this epistemological theory of the relation between theory and experiment differs sharply from the epistemological theory of naive falsificationism"

Imre Lakatos, Philosopher

"In the information society, nobody thinks. We expect to banish paper, but we actually banish thought"

Michael Crichton, Author

"Proper names are rigid designators"

Saul Kripke, Philosopher

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use"

William Falconer, Poet

"Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad"

Joseph Roux, Clergyman

"Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat"

H. G. Bohn, Publisher

"Rationalism, which is the feeling that everything is subject to and completely explicable by Reason, consequently rejects everything not visible and calculable"

Francis Parker Yockey, Writer

"Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them"

Dean Inge, Philosopher

"A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years"

Wendell Willkie, Lawyer

"One can imagine that the ultimate mathematician is one who can see analogies between analogies"

Stefan Banach, Mathematician

"The deductive method is the mode of using knowledge, and the inductive method the mode of acquiring it"

Henry Mayhew, Journalist

"We may either proceed from principles to facts, or recede from facts to principles"

Henry Mayhew, Journalist

"You know how much I am inclined to explain all disputes among philosophical schools as merely verbal disputes, or at least to derive them originally from verbal disputes"

Moses Mendelssohn, Philosopher

"Liberalism is Rationalism in politics"

Francis Parker Yockey, Writer

"Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else"

Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosopher

"The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise"

Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosopher

"Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic"

Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosopher

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'"

Arthur Eddington, Scientist

"Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking"

Ernest Renan, Philosopher

"One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism"

David Foster Wallace, Writer

"Ridicule is the first and last argument of a fool"

Charles Simmons, Politician

"Either the law exists, or it does not"

Andre Norton, Writer

"Kids don't have ruts yet that adults have carved into their minds. They're born logical. Crooked thinking has to be taught"

James P. Hogan, Author

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

Avicenna, Philosopher

"That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence"

Avicenna, Philosopher

"The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution"

Steven Pinker, Scientist

"It's better to get smart than to get mad. I try not to get so insulted that I will not take advantage of an opportunity to persuade people to change their minds"

John H. Johnson, Businessman

"The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero"

Steven Pinker, Scientist

"Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized"

Benjamin Haydon, Artist

"There are two sides to every question"

Protagoras, Philosopher

"You guys are both saying the same thing. The only reason you're arguing is because you're using different words"

S. I. Hayakawa, Politician

"Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth"

Marston Morse, Mathematician

"Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another"

Ferdinand De Saussure, Educator

"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture"

Learned Hand, Judge

"We stand a better chance with aristocracy, whether hereditary or elective, than with monarchy"

Ezra Stiles, Clergyman

"Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct"

F. H. Bradley, Philosopher

"To sum up: It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence"

William Kingdon Clifford, Mathematician

"I see mysteries and complications wherever I look, and I have never met a steadily logical person"

Martha Gellhorn, Journalist

"I'll not listen to reason... reason always means what someone else has got to say"

Elizabeth Gaskell, Novelist

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