Jean Piaget Quotes

My mother cared more about how you reasoned than about the conclusions you reached.

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.

It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker.

I am a linear thinker in a lot of ways.

I don't make decisions with my heart, I use my brain to think things through.

Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent.

Mechanical rules are never a substitute for clarity of thought.

When you have answers, when everything has a reason, when it makes sense to an analytical person, you're going to be more successful. You're going to be more comfortable.

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

A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.

Today we are apt to downplay or disregard the importance of good thinking to strong faith; and some, disastrously, even regard thinking as opposed to faith.

Geometry is beautifully logical, and it teaches you how to think and prove that things are so, step by step by step. Proofs are excellent lessons in reasoning. Without logic and reasoning, you are dependent on jumping to conclusions or - worse - having empty opinions.

The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.

We [may] answer the question: "Why is snow white?" by saying, "For the same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we give another example of the same fact. This offering a similar instance, instead of a reason, has often been criticised as one of the forms of logical depravity in men. But manifestly it is not a perverse act of thought, but only an incomplete one. Furnishing parallel cases is the necessary first step towards abstracting the reason imbedded in them all.

We owe it to our kids to inform them and train them how to think, not what to think.

I agree that it's important to be of a virtuous nature, but I would also contend that if you had to choose between giving a man a noble disposition or teaching him to think clearly, you'd do better to teach him to think clearly. Too many problems in this world are caused by men with noble dispositions and clouded minds.

There is a chalk outline slowly being drawn around common sense and most people can't identify the victim.

With method and logic one can accomplish anything.

Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.

I have this real moron thing I do? It's called thinking.

It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.

Reason is universal because no attempted challenge to its results can avoid appealing to reason in the end-by claiming, for example, that what was presented as an argument is really a rationalization. This can undermine our confidence in the original method or practice only by giving us reasons to believe something else, so that finally we have to think about the arguments to make up our minds.

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.

Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.