5 Bertrand Russell Quotes on Reasoning

Bertrand Russell quotes on reasoning

82. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

84. When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

151. Since the world is what it is, it is clear that valid reasoning from sound principles cannot lead to error; but a principle may be so nearly true as to deserve theoretical respect, and yet may lead to practical consequences which we feel to be absurd. There is therefore a justification for common sense in philosophy, but only as showing that our theoretical principles cannot be quite correct so long as their consequences are condemned by an appeal to common sense which we feel to be irresistible. The theorist may retort that common sense is no more infallible than logic. But this retort, though made by Berkeley and Hume, would have been wholly foreign to Locke's intellectual temper.

155. The worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.

163. In a man whose reasoning powers are good, fallacious arguments are evidence of bias.