Johann Georg Hamann Quotes

Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

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.

When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.

[Sherlock Holmes:] The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

I hope you become comfortable with the use of logic without being deceived into concluding that logic will inevitably lead you to the correct conclusion.

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

The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.

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

The effective thinker treats arrogance as the major sin of thinking.

Logic is the art of convincing us some truth.

The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches.

Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them.

Plenty of pundits have really high IQs, but they don't have any discipline in how they look at the world, and so it leads to a lot of bullshit, basically.

Practically, Science is true; and Faith is foolish.

A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.

Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?

For hundreds of pages the closely-reasoned arguments unroll, axioms and theorems interlock. And what remains with us in the end? A general sense that the world can be expressed in closely-reasoned arguments, in interlocking axioms and theorems.

My mind is just as open as it ever was, professor. But it's a scientific mind, and there's no place in it for superstitions.

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.

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.

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect.

Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by other people, we get indoctrinated and we get influenced by advertising.

Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument ... which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument ... which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.