William James Quotes

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

Thinking - in particular abstract thinking, which most of us are introduced to through the study of mathematics and literature - helps us learn that we can become problem solvers.

Logical reasoning is an argument which we have with ourselves and which reproduces internally the features of a real argument.

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.

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.

A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.

Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.

Managers thinking about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite riddles: How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg? The answer: Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

We ought to be able to persuade on opposite sides of a question; as also we ought in the case of arguing by syllogism: not that we should practice both, for it is not right to persuade to what is bad; but in order that the bearing of the case may not escape us, and that when another makes an unfair use of these reasonings, we may be able to solve them.

Analogies are figures intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent toys if they fail.

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

Mathematical Reasoning is not only exact; it has its own criteria of reality.

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

Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.

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.

... mathematics is the science of skillful operations with concepts and rules invented just for this purpose.

With thought, all problems can be resolved.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

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.

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.

The best result of mathematics is to be able to do without it.

Some persons have contended that mathematics ought to be taught by making the illustrations obvious to the senses. Nothing can be more absurd or injurious: it ought to be our never-ceasing effort to make people think, not feel.

The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy.

So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?" "No," I said, "I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely." At that he said, "You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?" But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.