#reasoning

To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all. ↗

— Rex Stout

#based #believe #decisions #different #different thing

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.) ↗

— Carl Sagan

#truth #persistence

There are three people one can never reason with: a drunk, a crazy person, and a fool. ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#reason #reasonable #reasoning #r-alan-woods

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

— Charles Sanders Peirce

#fact #foundation #good #logic #possible

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#directly #discovery #effectively #error #false

As I have said, you have no reason to trust me, and an excellent reason not to. ↗

— Robin McKinley

#beauty #beauty-and-the-beast #love #reasoning #trust

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately. Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court. ↗

— Mark Twain

#cats #dogs #doves #foxes #geese

When things are in order, if the cause of the orderliness cannot be deduced from the motion of the elements or from the composition of matter, it is quite possibly a cause possessing a mind. ↗

— Johannes Kepler

#cause #id #intelligent-design #kepler #naturalism

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

#any #communication #each #frequently #happens

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. ↗

— Edmund Burke

#effectually #fear #mind #passion #powers