Affective Reasoning Quotes

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

Beneath words and logic are emotional connections that largely direct how we use our words and logic.

At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.

People and nations act on the basis of what they feel rather than what is real.

Logic will never change emotion or perception.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

All our reasoning boils down to yielding to sentiment.

I continue to be fascinated by the fact that feelings are not just the shady side of reason but that they help us to reach decisions as well.

People behave more on the basis of how they feel than how they think; unless there are good feelings between people, it is almost impossible to reason intelligently.

The mind is always the patsy of the heart.

The moment you start dividing thought and feeling, the ratio of sinitive from the intuitive, you're dead. There is no difference between emotion and thought. You can be unreasonable.

Sentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.

I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.

While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you.