John Bytheway Quotes

I'm not a great student, so I don't know that I would have been a great detective. Part of my brain sort of works that way, like wanting to figure out puzzles and figure out what happened and why people do the things they do and who they are and how it happened.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

Good questions outrank easy answers.

I remember when I was a kid in school and teachers would explain things to me about what I read, and I'd think, Where did they get that? I didn't read that in there. Later you look at it and think, That's kind of an interesting idea.

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

If I can bring some light to bear on problems like that, I feel that people will be enlightened not only on the question but also on a way of approaching such questions.

I collect axioms, paradoxes, maxims, teaching stories, proverbs, and aphorisms of all sorts, because I love to see complex ideas distilled into a few words.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

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.

I love meeting people and analysing their world. I like having a puzzle to solve. That's why I do so much work in advance. Even if it doesn't affect my performance in the end, I just find it so much more interesting if I've got as wide as possible an understanding of the material.

Without analysis, no synthesis.

To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.

Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.

Where everyone else sees a straight line, you see a maze, and when I'm done talking to you, the maze starts to make more sense --Reply by Dove to Aly's silent inquiry

One must be an inventor to read well.

You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit." "Perhaps it hasn't one," Alice ventured to remark. "Tut, tut, child!" said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.

The question is just as important as the answer.

I think like a detective.

You can observe a lot by watching.

The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothing more than what the magnifying glass is for sight.

I think I have a very detailed sense of observation. I am interested in the details of people's lives and what information these details give.

Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.