Joseph Glanvill Quotes

The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.

The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it.

You can't criticize geometry. It's never wrong.

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

If you have ever studied geometry, you remember that by a course of reasoning Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. Euclid has shown you how to work it out. Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, and to show that it is erroneous, would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar?

I believe only in the mathematics.

Arithmetic is where the content lies, and not logic; but logic prompts certainty, and not arithmetic.

I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible.

I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.

Faith is an island in the setting sun, But proof is the bottom line for everyone.

If all you have is faith, then you never actually know anything.

A proof tells us where to concentrate our doubts.

Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.

There's a big difference between sanity and insanity.

Logic must look after itself. In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic.

When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

I'm a max player. Don't get mad at me because I'm telling you what's real. One plus one is two, all day long, and it's never gonna change. And that's factorial.

Irrefragability, thy name is mathematics.

Worse than madness. Sanity.

But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo and spits at you.

There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling - absolutely essential to mental health and happiness.

Many that are not mad have, sure, more lack of reason.