William E. Vaughan Quotes

Logic is the art of convincing us some truth.

In my opinion, it helps enormously to know why something is true, rather than being told it is true, for why should you believe me? Never believe anything on the authority of a single person but seek confirmation — and reason is the best confirmation

Logic is the art of making truth prevail.

A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason.

Use your logick, and then your rhetorick. Rhetorick without logick, is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet I confess more are taken with rhetorick than logick, because they are catched with a free expression, when they understand not reason. Logick must be natural, or it is worth nothing at all: Your rhetorick figures may be learned.

...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.

Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.

Abstract truth is the eye of reason.

Public reason arguments can be good or bad just like other arguments.

All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence.

Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.

The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it.

Convincing yourself doesn't win an argument.

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

The sounder your argument, the more satisfaction you get out of it.

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

I will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I will go to hell with my reason rather than to heaven without it.

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

Rhetoric is cheap, evidence comes more dearly.

Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.

Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.

A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.