Mind

"I am not … a "good man"! … And I'm not a bad man. … I am not a "hero" — and I'm definitely not a President — and no — I'm not an officer! … You know what I am? … I AM … an IDIOT! … with a box — and a screwdriver — passing through, helping out, learning."

"You know there’s no advantage to be gained by murdering idiots—it doesn’t teach the idiot anything and it might give onlookers the idea that you take them seriously."

"Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom — that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself."

"Qui autem dixerit fratri suo, Raca: reus erit concilio."

"Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs."

"Idiots are not responsible for what they do. The real guilt falls on rational people who sit on their hands while the morons run wild. You can opt out if you want to. Play it safe. But if you do, don’t complain when the roof comes down."

"The idiot heard the sounds, but they had no meaning for him. He lived inside somewhere, apart, and the little link between word and significance hung broken."

"Degrade first the arts if you'd mankind degrade, Hire idiots to paint with cold light and hot shade."

"To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit — General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess."

"What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the idiot is not worth my care."

"Never confuse an idiot."

"If we've learned anything from the best-selling Diary of a Wimpy Kid children's book series, it's that those who see themselves surrounded by idiots are usually idiots themselves."

"Jesse Pinkman: So you're chasing around a fly and in your world, I'm the idiot?"

"It is paltry philosophy if in the old-fashioned way one lays down rules and principles in total disregard of moral values. As soon as these appear one regards them as exceptions, which gives them a certain scientific status, and thus makes them into rules. Or again one may appeal to genius, which is above all rules; which amounts to admitting that rules are not only made for idiots, but are idiotic in themselves."

"All right! I confess, I confess. I confess to your being a bigger idiot than I thought."

"When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself."

"A man demonstrates his rationality, not by a commitment to fixed ideas, stereotyped procedures, or immutable concepts, but by the manner in which, and the occasions on which, he changes those ideas, procedures, and concepts."

"To ingenious attempts at explaining by the light of reason things which want the light of history to show their meaning, much of the learned nonsense of the world has indeed been due."

"Though reason is not to be relied upon as a guide universally sufficient to direct us what to do, yet it is generally to be relied upon and obeyed when it tells us what we are not to do."

"Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired."

"Reason, sometimes, seems to me to be the faculty our soul possesses of understanding nothing about our body!"

"As with the research on deductive reasoning, research on inductive reasoning shows that affect impacts an individual‘s ability to inductively reason (Evans et al., 1993). For example, research shows that positive moods have been shown to promote imagination, ingenuity, creative and integrative thinking (Isen et al., 1985; Isen et al., 1987; Salovey et al., 1993), increase working memory load (Seibert & Ellis, 1991), enhance the ability to interpret information and increase cognitive flexibility (Isen & Daubman, 1984; Isen, 1999), and increase performance on a number of cognitive tasks (Ashby & Isen, 1999; Isen, 1999). Negative moods have been shown to decrease accuracy of judgment, deteriorate cognitive processing, and diminish decision making (Palfai & Salovey, 1993; Channon & Baker, 1994; Oaksford, Morris, Graigner, &Williams, 1996; Goel & Dolan, 2003; Blanchette & Richards, 2004; Blanchette, 2006). Again, as with deductive reasoning, conflicting results have also been found."

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

"I have no other but a woman's reason I think him so because I think him so."

"What a return do we make for those blessings we have received! and how disrespectfully do we treat the gospel of Christ to which we owe that clear light both of reason and of nature which we now enjoy, when we endeavor to set up reason and nature in opposition to it! Ought the withered hand, which Christ has restored and made whole, to be lifted up against Him?"

"According to Blanchette and Campbell (2012), ―deductive reasoning in particular has often been seen as a hallmark of human intelligence and of the potential for logical thinking (159). Deductive reasoning consists of the method in which inference is constructed logically through valid conclusions from a set of premises (Wassertheil-Smoller & Smoller, 2015). The process of deductive reasoning consists of drawing a conclusion that is based on multiple arguments that are commonly presumed to be truthful or legitimate. Through deductive reasoning, individuals assume that the set of premises are truthful, and consequently, the conclusions that arise from these valid premises must in turn, produce legitimate truthful conclusions (Walton, 1990). According to Heit and Rotello (2010), deductive reasoning is ―more heavily influenced by slower analytic processes that encompass more deliberative, and typically more accurate, reasoning (805). Individuals who use deductive reasoning adopt rules,properties, and facts to reach a conclusion. Deductive reasoning starts out with a general premise, or hypothesis, and explores the possibilities to draw a particular, logical conclusion."

"Most people in reasoning, dear Phaedrus, use notions that not only are "ready-made," but have actually been made by nobody. No one is responsible for them, and so they serve every one badly."

"His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them, they are not worth the search."

"Reason deceives us more often than does nature."

"Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unus'd."

"Give you a reason on compulsion! if reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I."

"Every why hath a wherefore."

"My reason is now all to me—my only warrant for God, virtue, and immortality. Woe to me if I catch this, my only witness, in a contradiction! if my esteem for its conclusions diminishes! if a broken vessel in my brain diverts its action! My happiness is henceforth intrusted to the harmonious action of my sensorium: woe to me if the strings of this instrument give a false note in the critical moments of my life—if my convictions vary with my pulsations!"

"Those who follow the banners of Reason are like the well-disciplined battalion, which, wearing a more sober uniform, and making a less dazzling show, than the light troops commanded by imagination, enjoy more safety, and even more honour, in the conflicts of human life."

"Good reasons must, of force, give place to better."

"Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents."

"Then old age and experience, hand in hand, Lead him to death, make him to understand, After a search so painful and so long, That all his life he has been in the wrong. Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies, Who was so proud, so witty, and so wise."

"Our sphere of action is life's happiness, And he that thinks beyond thinks like an ass. Thus, whilst against false reasoning I inveigh, I own right reason, which I would obey: That reason which distinguishes by sense And gives us rules of good and ill from thence, That bounds desires, with a reforming will To keep 'em more in vigour, not to kill. Your reason hinders, mine helps to enjoy, Renewing appetites yours would destroy."

"Were I (who to my cost already am One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man) A spirit free to choose, for my own share, What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear, I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear, Or anything but that vain animal, Who is so proud of being rational. The senses are too gross; and he'll contrive A sixth to contradict the other five; And before certain instinct will prefer Reason, which fifty times for one does err; Reason, an ignis fatuus of the mind, Which, leaving light of nature, sense, behind, Pathless and dangerous wandering ways it takes, Through error's fenny bogs and thorny brakes; Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain Mountains of whimseys, heaped in his own brain."

"Reason cannot save us, nothing can; but reason can mitigate the cruelty of living."

"As soon as an object is regarded as a dynamic entity, then analysis and definition become both difficult and unsatisfactory. Thinking is under such circumstances well-nigh impossible for most people. To think at all logically, no matter how concretistic the thought may be, there must be some static point. Where, now are we to look for this point? The man of action answers, in its effect. Then an object becomes completely separated... from all other objective elements as well as from the perceiving self. ...Reality, in other words, is pragmatic. ...Like all other philosophers, he [the thinker, as opposed to the man of action] is... aware of the movement and the shifting form of things. He is as much impressed by this as the man of action. But the world must first be static and objects must first take on a permanent or, at least, a stable form before one can deal with them systematically. ...The attempts of these primitive thinkers are embodied in numerous creation myths... the task is always the same—an original, moving, shapeless or undifferentiated world must be brought to rest and given stable form. ...There exist, however, many things that manifestly do not have permanence of form and do look different at different times. Philosophers have always given the same answer to this problem and predicated a unity behind these changing aspects and forms."

"Surely the romantic and now permanent revolution against the ancient regime of reason is against a regime largely invented by the revolutionaries themselves."

"La raison est historienne, mais les passions sont actrices."

"There is no point on which a greater amount of decision is to be found in Courts of law and equity than as to what is reasonable; for instance, reasonable time, reasonable notice, and the like. It is impossible a priori to state what is reasonable in such cases. You must have the particular facts of each case established before you can ascertain what is meant by reasonable time, notice, and the like."

"But since the affairs of men rest still incertain, Let's reason with the worst that may befall."

"Reason can discover Things only near; sees nothing that's above her."

"All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence."

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture."

"Say first, of God above or man below, What can we reason but from what we know?"

"Id nobis maxime nocet, quod non ad rationis lumen sed ad similitudinem aliorum vivimus."