Norton Juster Quotes

Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.

The only exercise I excel at is jumping to conclusions.

Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well to produce more assurance in its use.

Italians think with their heads.

Sometimes one must make extended conclusions from limited data.

None of us should assume stuff.

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.

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

I hope you become comfortable with the use of logic without being deceived into concluding that logic will inevitably lead you to the correct conclusion.

It is the simple hypotheses of which one must be most wary; because these are the ones that have the most chances of passing unnoticed.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

Highly intelligent and well-informed people disagree on every political issue. Therefore, intelligence and knowledge are useless for making decisions, because if any of that stuff helped, then all the smart people would have the same opinions. So use your "gut instinct" to make voting choices. That is exactly like being clueless, but with the added advantage that you'll feel as if your random vote preserved democracy.

Einstein says common sense is just habit of thought. It's how we're used to thinking about things, but a lot of the time it just gets in the way.

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

Through logic and inference we can prove anything. Therefore, logic and inference, in contrast to ordinary daily living experience, are secondary instruments of knowledge. Probably tertiary.

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

The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.

The cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day.

Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement.

Ordinarily men exercise their memory much more than their judgment.

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.

To accept reason is impossible if you don't already possess it.

First with the head, then with the heart.

False conclusions which have been reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulse.