E. W. Howe Quotes

Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reasons why all the world should think as I think.

No one seemed able to look at themselves, coolly, from the outside. Their reality was all that could be seen in the light cast ahead by their own wishful thinking.

I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are.

From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.

It is so.When YOU think so

Logic and truth are two very different things, but they often look the same to the mind that's performing the logic.

So you see how endlessly futile and fruitless it would be if we wanted to refute their objections every time they obstinately resolved not to think through what they say but merely to speak, just so long as they contradict our arguments in any way they can.

Amazing what people make up based on what they choose to see.

Reason is so unreasonable, that few people can say they are in possession of it.

I think the greatest tragedy of mankind is that people have ideas and opinions in their heads but don't have a process for properly examining these ideas to find out what's true. That creates a world of distortions.

I am prepared to accept from others their own version of reality. I think it is a basic freedom really, to create one's own reality from whatever truths are available.

You don't want to know the Truth, you want to know the truth as you understand it. This is the greatest barrier to your enlightenment. You think you already know the truth! You think you already understand how it is. So you agree with everything you see or hear or read that falls into the paradigm of your understanding, and reject everything which does not.

Logic is a wonderful invention. It is so wonderful, people often mistake it for reason. Reason, however, requires sense. Logic requires only consistency.

Giving importance to what we think because we thought it, taking our own selves not only (to quote the Greek philosopher) as the measure of all things but as their norm or standard, we create in ourselves, if not an interpretation, at least a criticism of the universe, which we don't even know and therefore cannot criticize. The giddiest, most weak-minded of us then promote that criticism to an interpretation that's superimposed, like a hallucination; induced rather than deduced. It's a hallucination in the strict sense, being an illusion based on something only dimly seen.

We always think from where we come from. We always think from the sources that shape our understanding. I think about the world through the lens of my Islamic tradition. I accept this but I must also have intellectual humility.

Both our opinions are rooted in our experience," I said. "Both of them are true, it's just that we've had different experiences.

Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.

Few men think, yet all will have opinions.

That's the beauty of argument, if you argue correctly, you're never wrong.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.

There are no such self-deceivers as those who think they reason when they only feel.

People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.

A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are - or as we are conditioned to see it.