Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

There is no problem so complicated that you can't find a very simple answer to it if you look at it right.

Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.

If you don't ask the right question, every answer seems wrong -

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.

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.

Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.

Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence.

Invention requires both disciplines, strict common sense and wild imagination.

Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.

Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent," said Miss Susan. "But answers do.

Science is the only true guide in life.

The number of people that can reason well is much smaller than those that can reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling rocks, then several reasoners might be better than one. But reasoning isn't like hauling rocks, it's like, it's like racing, where a single, galloping Barbary steed easily outruns a hundred wagon-pulling horses.

An engineer cannot participate in irrationality.

Sometimes the concept you're questioning makes more sense to ask just the second one and not the first one.

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, themagic Laby'rinth's single clue.

Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried.

I took the batteries out my mysticism / 
And put them in my thinking cap

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

The best way to get a better answer is to start asking a better question.

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

I can put two and two together, you know. Do not think you are dealing with a man who has lost his grapes.

That's all it took to solve problems - just sense.

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

With method and logic one can accomplish anything.