Marilyn vos Savant Quotes

I don't really get things very... intuitively. I mean, I don't immediately understand things. The only way I really get it is by writing it down.

Critical thinking does seem a superior sort of thinking because it seems as though the critic is actually going beyond the scope of what is being criticized in order to criticize it. That is only rarely a true assumption because, most often, the critic will seize on some little aspect that he or she understands and tackle only that.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgements which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning. The exercise of ingenuity in mathematics consists in aiding the intuition through suitable arrangements of propositions, and perhaps geometrical figures or drawings.

The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.

if you do not appreciate the mathematics, you cannot see, among the great variety of facts, that logic permits you to go from one to the other

Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.

I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody's easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method.

Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upward and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be traveled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we shall end.

I think you have to be left-brained, to a certain extent, to understand science. I can talk about it, but I can't do it.

The concept of logical thinking is selection and this is brought about by the processes of acceptance and rejection. Rejection is the basis of logical thinking.

I think everyone should get a little exposure to computer science because it really forces you to think in a slightly different way, and it's a skill that you can apply in life in general, whether you end up in computer science or not.

What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of the given facts or assumptions.

Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.

Learn to use your brain power. Critical thinking is the key to creative problem solving in business.

Thinking. A process by which I use my brain to make a rational decision.

My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another.

Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.

Critical thinking is to a liberal education as faith is to religion. ... the converse was true also - faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.

We can't avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well.

There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.

The process of elimination, combined with a modicum of common sense, will always assist us to arrive at the correct conclusion with the maximum of possible accuracy and the minimum of hard labor. Which being translated means: I guessed it.

I think like a detective.

These little grey cells. It is up to them.

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.