Reasoning Quotes - Page 21

• If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Facts, Authority, Abandon

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• Bushido is realised in the presence of death. In the case of having to choose between life and death you should choose death. There is no other reasoning.

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  Mean, Civilization, Life And Death

  "Hagakure". Book by Yamamoto Tsunetomo and Nabeshima Mitsushige, circa 1716.

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• Ideology on which the Kyoto Protocol is based, is a new form of totalitarian ideology, along with Marxism, Communism and socialism. We had doubts about the Kyoto Protocol, we wanted reasoning from our partners in the European Union, in the IPCC. Formal requests had been sent to these organizations. But we have not received responses yet, which suggests that no coherent answers can be offered. What we hear is 'it is not comprehensive responses that matter, we will not give them anyway; what is important is whether you believe us or not'.

  Andrey Illarionov

  Believe, Kyoto Protocol, Organization

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• Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading.

  William Blake

  Reading, Rubbish, Action

  William Blake (1966). “Complete Writings: With Variant Readings”, p.579, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The wishes of the people, seldom founded in deep disquisitions, or resulting from other reasonings than their present feelings, may not entirely accord with our true policy and interest. If they do not, to observe a proper line of conduct for promoting the one, and avoiding offence to the other, will be a work of great difficulty.

  George Washington

  People, Feelings, Wish

  George Washington (1852). “The life of General Washington: first president of the United States”, p.301

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• The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him--The reasoning mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Mind, Weapons

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• I shall devote all my efforts to bring light into the immense obscurity that today reigns in Analysis. It so lacks any plan or system, that one is really astonished that there are so many people who devote themselves to it - and, still worse, it is absolutely devoid of any rigor.

  Niels Henrik Abel

  Light, People, Effort

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• The line has magnitude in one way, the plane in two ways, and the solid in three ways, and beyond these there is no other magnitude because the three are all.

  Aristotle

  Two, Three, Ontology

  "On the Heavens". Treatise by Aristotle (Book 1), 350 BC.

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• Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."

  John Backus

  Law, Understanding, Ordinary

  "Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?". John Backus' 1977 Turing Award lecture, published in "Communications of the ACM", Volume 21, No. 8 (pp. 639-640), August 1978.

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• We say that we often see animals in our dreams, but we forget that almost always we are ourselves animals therein, deprived of that reasoning power which projects upon things the light of certainty; on the contrary we bring to bear on the spectacle of life only a dubious vision, extinguished anew every moment by oblivion, the former reality fading before that which follows it as one projection of a magic lantern fades before the next as we change the slide.

  Marcel Proust

  Dream, Animal, Reality

  Marcel Proust (1981). “Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's way. Within a budding grove”, New York : Random House

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• The most part of men, though they have the use of reasoning a little way, as in numbering to some degree; yet it serves them to little use in common life; in which they govern themselves, some better, some worse, according to their differences of experience, quickness of memory, and inclinations to several ends; but specially according to good or evil fortune, and the errors of one another.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Memories, Men, Errors

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.

  David Hume

  Morning, Night, Silence

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.339, 谷月社

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• Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.

  David Hume

  Errors, Matter, Facts

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1993). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.73, Hackett Publishing

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• THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious.

  David Hume

  Philosophical, Discovery, Topics

  David Hume (1875). “Essays Moral, Political, and Literary”, p.79

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• When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper...the fountain of all thought has been opened to him...the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Distance, Boys, Two

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• In my paper the fact the XY was not equal to YX was very disagreeable to me. I felt this was the only point of difficulty in the whole scheme...and I was not able to solve it.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Paper, Ontology, Able

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• It is well known that the central problem of the whole of modern mathematics is the study of transcendental functions defined by differential equations.

  Felix Klein

  Ontology, Logic, Study

  Felix Klein (1893). “The Evanston Colloquium: Lectures on Mathematics Delivered from Aug. 28 to Sept. 9, 1893 Before Members of the Congress of Mathematics Held in Connection with the World's Fair in Chicago at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill”

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• We find sects and parties in most branches of science; and disputes which are carried on from age to age, without being brought to an issue. Sophistry has been more effectually excluded from mathematics and natural philosophy than from other sciences. In mathematics it had no place from the beginning; mathematicians having had the wisdom to define accurately the terms they use, and to lay down, as axioms, the first principles on which their reasoning is grounded. Accordingly, we find no parties among mathematicians, and hardly any disputes.

  Thomas Reid

  Philosophy, Party, Issues

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• A good proof is one that makes us wiser.

  IU?. I. Manin

  Ontology, Logic, Proof

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• If we base our belief systems on the humble assumption that the complexities of the world are ontologically beyond our understanding, then maybe our belief systems will make more sense and end up causing less suffering.

  Moby

  Humble, Understanding, Suffering

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• The world is too big and too intricate to conform to our ideas of what it should be like... Just because we invent myths and theories to explain away the chaos we're still going to live in a world that's older and more complicated than we'll ever understand.

  Moby

  Ideas, World, Ontology

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• The mind God is looking for in man is a doubting, questioning mind, not a dogmatic mind; dogmatic reasoning is wrong reasoning. Dogmatic reason ties a huge rock to a man's foot and stops him forever from advancing.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  God, Science, Men

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• It's not that fun to just play a villain, without any reasoning behind it.

  Nicholas Lea

  Fun, Play, Villain

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• 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

  Communication, Thinking, Two

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• Mathematics is not arithmetic. Though mathematics may have arisen from the practices of counting and measuring it really deals with logical reasoning in which theorems-general and specific statements-can be deduced from the starting assumptions. It is, perhaps, the purest and most rigorous of intellectual activities, and is often thought of as queen of the sciences.

  Christopher Zeeman

  Queens, Science, Logical Reasoning

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