Anderson's Law: I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
Man thinks, God laughs - Jewish proverb
Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic. Nicola Abbagnano (1900 &endash; 1990)
Beware of a strong head and a cold heart.- Paul Bayne
Logic and truth ... have very little to do with each other. Logic is concerned merely with the fidelity and accuracy with which a certain process is performed, a process which can be performed with any materials, with any assumption. You can be as logical about griffins and basilisks as about sheep and pigs ... Logic, then, is not necessarily an instrument for finding out truth; on the contrary, truth is a necessary instrument for using logic--for using it, that is, for the discovery of further truth ... Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.-- G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who was Orthodox (1963)
Poor human reason, when it trusts in itself, substitutes the strangest absurdities for the highest divine concepts. John Chrysostom
Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else… . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! &emdash;Fyodor Dostoyevsky, _Notes from the Underground _
Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.-- Anatole France
Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling. Felix Frankfurter
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. Galileo Galilei
Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic. - William Ewart Gladstone, 1809 - 1898
Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal. Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804)
Reason, thou vain impertinence,
Deluding hypocrite, begone!
And go and plague your men of sense,
But let my love and me alone.
At best thou'rt but a glimmering light,
Which serves not to direct our way;
But, like the moon, confounds our sight,
And only shows it is not day.
-"Reason" (from Miscellaneous Poems and Translations by Oxford Hands,printed 1685)
Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.
David Hume (1711-1776) "Dialogs Concerning Natural Religion," 1779.
Bertie in particular sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompatible. He held that in fact human affairs were carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on rationally. -John Maynard Keynes, on Bertrand Russell
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner. --Ursula K. Le Guin, 1986
When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all. ~C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity.
It is only when you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt. Human minds. They do not come from nowhere. ~ C.S. Lewis 1898-1963 , Miracles (1947)
Dr. Henning asked: "Is reason to hold no authority at all with Christians, since it is to be set aside in matters of faith?" The Doctor replied: Before faith and the knowledge of God, reason is mere darkness; but in the hands of those who believe,'tis an excellent instrument. All facilities and gifts are pernicious, exercised by the impious; but most salutary when possessed by godly persons." Martin Luther (1483-1546), Table Talk, LXXVI. [1569]
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but--more frequently than not--struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God. Martin Luther (1483-1546), Table Talk [1569]
People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives. Thomas Mann
I have often thought of Mr Paul Bayne, his fairwell words to Dr Ames when going to Holland; Mr Bayne perceiving him to be a man of extra-ordinary parts, 'Beware (said he) of a strong head and a cold heart.' COTTON MATHER
The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proven to have their counterparts in the world of fact. Benjamin E. Mays (1895-1984)
Monotheism, someone has said, offers two simple axioms: 1) There is a God. 2) It's not you. Knowing that we are fallible humans underlies the humility and openness that inspires science, and democracy. As Madeline L'Engle noted, "The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument." -- David G. Myers
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right...Time makes more converts than reason.
Tom Paine, Common Sense
The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.-- Blaise Pascal
Every logical position will eventually lead you into trouble, and heresy, and chaos. Every logical position is consistent, but it is logic which is in the human mind, not God's logic. The human mind is finite and cannot grasp eternity, and therefore the finite mind sees the infinite as not graspable coherently. If we could grasp it all coherently, without contradiction, we would be God. The person who insists on being logical to the end winds up in a mess. I am not saying that we should not be rational. I am not anti-intellectual. I am saying that the intellect by itself is helpless to arrive at total truth. ... Kenneth L. Pike (1912-2001), Stir, Change, Create
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. -- Bertrand Russell
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.--Swift
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.-- Swift
One can never do without straightforward common sense in matters great as well as small. -- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p31
Would reason ever have proved to me that I must love my neigbour instead of strangling him? I was told that in my childhood and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law demanding that I should strangle all who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one's neighbour reason could never discover, because it's unreasonable.-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
It is not because God is irrational that we cannot comprehend him; it is because God is rational, and in the nature of the case, ultimately rational.- C Van Til
Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.--John Wesley, Letter to Joseph Benson, October 5, 1770
Two and two continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five. - James Whistler
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