When people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.
You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories.
You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
If a person is A) poorly, B) receives treatment intended to make him better, and C) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
The intellect has only one failing, which, to be sure, is a very considerable one. It has no conscience.
No mistake is so commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause to be bad because the arguments of its supporters are, to a great extent, nonsensical
Logic is a feeble reed, friend.
The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.
Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.
