Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

Common sense is calculation applied to life.

What I knew was I liked math and science, and I never wanted to memorize everything. I wanted to understand where it came from.

Some tools of thought are so blunt that they are almost useless; others are so sharp that they are dangerous. But the wise man will have the use of both kinds.

Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of 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.

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.

Bein logical gave me a reason to doubt

The grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.

Reason is the miner's lamp used in bringing up ore from the mind.

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

Logic is one thing and commonsense another.

You don't learn algebra with your blessed soul. Can't you look at it with your clear simple wits?

Logic is the hygiene the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong.

Stupidity is no excuse of not thinking.

Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.

Reason well from the beginning and then there will never be any need to look back with confusion and doubt.

The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect to go.

To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to contemning the command of God.

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

Geometry enlightlens the intellect and sets one's mind right

The most uncommon form of intelligence is common sense.

Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.

For me, who only desire to become wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use.

It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why a man may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense.