Reasoning Ability Quotes

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

It is not merely that Johnny can't read, or even that Johnny can't think. Johnny doesn't know what thinking is, because thinking is so often confused with feeling. … The phrase ‘I feel’ is often used by American students to introduce a conclusion, rather than say ‘I think,’ or ‘I know,’ much less ‘I conclude.’ Unfortunately, ‘I feel’ is often the most accurate term…

Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human mind; Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.

Economics comes easily to me, and we all seek out what we do well in life. I had in mind becoming a businessman. And I was good at logic and reasoning; figures were comfortable inside my head.

Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.

Reason is the glory of human nature, and one of the chief eminences whereby we are raised above our fellow-creatures, the brutes, in this lower world.

Men are of three different capacities: one understands intuitively; another understands so far as it is explained; and a third understands neither of himself nor by explanation. The first is excellent, the second, commendable, and the third, altogether useless.

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.

If we did not have rational souls, we would not be able to believe.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.

Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.

The life of sense begins by assuming that we can only fitfully live the life of reason.

I am a living example of Modi's capacity to recognise talent and to reason.

I like to regard myself as someone who's capable of critical thought, that is to say, who can evaluate claims.

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, and the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well.

You can't process me with a normal brain.

The number of people that can reason well is much smaller than those that can reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling rocks, then several reasoners might be better than one. But reasoning isn't like hauling rocks, it's like, it's like racing, where a single, galloping Barbary steed easily outruns a hundred wagon-pulling horses.

The choicest gift of God to man, the gift of reason; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason; as if man could give reason to himself.

Wars, however frequent and destructive they may be, have never been able to kill entirely the intellectual and moral sense which raises man above the beast.

A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road he is at a stand. Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub. (from a letter dated 25 May, 1694)

Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects. Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to progress from one level of insight to another.

Intelligence is not a science.

Speech is reason's brother, and a kingly prerogative of man.