Dallas Willard Quotes

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

if you do not appreciate the mathematics, you cannot see, among the great variety of facts, that logic permits you to go from one to the other

The concept of logical thinking is selection and this is brought about by the processes of acceptance and rejection. Rejection is the basis of logical thinking.

Logic obviously is important. You need to be able to figure things out, to go to the end of a particular problem. But intuition is very important because it references things that logic alone cannot.

Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.

To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

You must acquire something of that industrious habit of mind which the study of natural science gives,—the art of comparing, of perceiving true likenesses and true differences, and so of classifying and arranging what you see; the art of connecting facts together in your mind in cause and effect

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

The main functions of intelligence, that of inventing solutions and that of verifying them, do not necessarily involve one another. The first partakes of imagination; the second alone is properly logical.

Thinking isn't something you think about. It comes naturally. Thinking involves many things. It involves being an observer. It involves analyzing things, taking in what's around you in the world and finding how to make it inspire your work or turn it into a lesson to teach your children; it's paying attention to details. That's what thinking is: processing.

Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.

Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied.

So we do sometimes think because it has been found to pay.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded.

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.

Mathematics is a language plus reasoning. It's like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning.

We seem to have trouble with [critical thinking]. And our political system doesn't help.

My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another.

Critical thinking does seem a superior sort of thinking because it seems as though the critic is actually going beyond the scope of what is being criticized in order to criticize it. That is only rarely a true assumption because, most often, the critic will seize on some little aspect that he or she understands and tackle only that.

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

I think like a detective.

Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.