Philosophy & Thought: Reason & Logic Quotes

"Less than fifteen per cent of the people do any original thinking on any subject. The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think"

Luther Burbank, Environmentalist

"Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory"

Gottfried Leibniz, Philosopher

"It would make life much easier if I could have total faith and not question everything all the time, but I can't do it and I won't do it"

Joey Skaggs, Celebrity

"Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism"

David Suzuki, Scientist

"Emotions have taught mankind to reason"

Luc de Clapiers, Writer

"Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason - the law which is perfection of reason"

Edward Coke, Businessman

"There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited"

Dorothy L. Sayers, Author

"A person of any mental quality has ideas of his own. This is common sense"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc"

David Bohm, Scientist

"Most controversies would soon be ended if those engaged in them would first accurately define their terms, and then adhere to their definitions"

Tryon Edwards, Theologian

"Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political - legislative and administrative - decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself"

Joseph A. Schumpeter, Economist

"But if cattle and horses, or lions, had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and do the work that men can do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves"

Xenophanes, Philosopher

"Language is a tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation"

Kenneth L. Pike, Sociologist

"Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors"

Antoine Rivarol, Journalist

"A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs; and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories"

Stefan Banach, Mathematician

"Mathematics is the most beautiful and most powerful creation of the human spirit"

Stefan Banach, Mathematician

"The combination of Federalism and Republicanism which formed the substance of the system, did not constitute a progressive and formative political principle, but it pointed in the direction of a constructive formula"

Herbert Croly, Author

"Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason"

Charles Curtis, Vice President

"I'm here to make sense"

Edward James Olmos, Actor

"It frequently happens that two persons, reasoning right on a mechanical subject, think alike and invent the same thing without any communication with each other"

Oliver Evans, Inventor

"In the first place, Descartes stands for the most explicit and uncompromising dualism between mind and matter"

James M. Baldwin, Psychologist

"Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe, from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man"

George G. Simpson

"If you put somebody on a crack pipe and give them a 9 mm Baretta, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what's going to happen next"

James Lee Burke, Author

"The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas"

Alfred Whitney Griswold, Educator

"Peace rules the day, where reason rules the mind"

Wilkie Collins, Novelist

"The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the right"

Lord Hailsham, Politician

"A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts"

Herbert V. Prochnow, Businessman

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers"

Thomas Pynchon, Writer

"The circumstances of human society are too complicated to be submitted to the rigor of mathematical calculation"

Marquis De Custine, Author

"Superstition is the poison of the mind"

Joseph Lewis, Writer

"Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate"

Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

"Man is a rational animal, who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

"Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense"

Voltaire, Writer

"Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause"

Voltaire, Writer

"The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms"

Albert Einstein, Physicist

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler"

Albert Einstein, Physicist

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality"

Albert Einstein, Physicist

"Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting"

Benjamin Franklin, Politician

"It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"To live is to think"

Cicero, Philosopher

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