Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.

The greater absurdities are, the more strongly they evince the falsity of that supposition from whence they flow.

When any opinion leads to absurdity, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false because it is of dangerous consequence.

A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven.

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

All sweeping assertions are erroneous.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

Many a long dispute among divines [theologians] may be thus abridged: It is so; It is not so. It is so; it is not so.

If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?

The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading

It is not only not right, it is not even wrong.

Arguments that explain everything... explain nothing

Insight makes argument ridiculous.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Anger is seldom without argument but seldom with a good one.

This is the most unheard of thing that I have ever heard of

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid—in which case all comment is superfluous—or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.

Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument.

I made a misstatement, and I stand by all my misstatements.

Analogies prove nothing, that is quite true, but they can make one feel more at home.

Logic is pointless.

Paradox implies that stating a contradiction disposes of it.

An infinite number of real parts of time, passing in succession, and exhausted one after another, appears so evident a contradiction, that no man, one should think, whose judgement is not corrupted, instead of being improved, by the sciences, would ever be able to admit of it.