Thinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & Judgment — Page 2

Ada Lovelace, Note G to her 1843 translation of Luigi Menabrea’s “Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage.” The claim concerns the proposed Analytical Engine in its historical design context and is not generalized into a factual limit on modern AI systems.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III, discussion of self-examination and the impartial spectator; Smith is describing the difficulty of judging one’s own conduct fairly.

The Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chapter II; Project Gutenberg #3300. Smith is explaining money as part of circulating capital rather than denying its practical usefulness.

The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VI; Project Gutenberg #3300. The statement is part of Smith’s eighteenth-century theory of price and income distribution.

The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter V; Project Gutenberg #3300. This belongs to Smith’s labour-command discussion of real and nominal price.

The Rape of the Lock, Canto V, lines 15–16 in Pope’s 1717 revision; spoken by Clarissa. Her moralizing speech (Canto V lines 7–36) was added in 1717, so the inherited 1714 source year is corrected to 1717. The reviewed evidence opens the 1717 Canto V scan start; the exact couplet is independently preserved in the complete final-form text.

The Black Tulip, Chapter VIII, “An Invasion,” Project Gutenberg #965. Exact-witness review corrects the inherited Chapter VI locator: the narrator says that evil minds soon grow familiar with evil thoughts immediately after Boxtel first shrinks from informing against Van Baerle and before he rationalizes the act.

Politics: A Treatise on Government, Book III, Chapter XVI, William Ellis translation; represented through the 1912 Dent witness / Project Gutenberg #6762. In comparing rule by a person with rule by law, Aristotle says that passion can affect even the best rulers and concludes that law is reason without desire.

“A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891), Project Gutenberg #1661. Holmes immediately warns that premature theorizing leads people to twist facts to suit theories; it is fictional detective dialogue.

The Hound of the Baskervilles, Chapter III, “The Problem,” Project Gutenberg #2852. Sherlock Holmes says that the world is full of obvious things nobody observes after inferring from Watson’s clean clothes and boots that he spent the rainy day indoors, then asks Watson to infer where Holmes himself has been. It remains fictional detective dialogue illustrating Holmes’s observational method rather than a universal scientific rule.

Amours de Voyage, Letter X, “Claude to Eustace,—from Rome,” Project Gutenberg #1393. Claude’s two sentences about knowledge appear in the fictional verse-letter sequence after he turns from Roman politics toward study. This is Clough’s fictional epistolary voice, not direct autobiography or an empirical claim about happiness.

On the Art of Writing, Lecture XII, “On Style,” Project Gutenberg #17470; typographic dashes are normalized from the represented plain-text edition.

On the Art of Writing, Lecture VI, Project Gutenberg #17470; Quiller-Couch is recalling the preceding lecture’s argument about jargon and prose.

On the Art of Writing, Lecture V, “Interlude: On Jargon,” Project Gutenberg #17470. “Masculine style” is retained as period wording, not endorsed as a gender standard.

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10715. The statement belongs to Schopenhauer’s broader, characteristically pessimistic discussion of age and experience.

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10715. The passage appears in an age-related comparison of intellectual powers and accumulated material.

Essay “On Books and Reading,” in a public-domain English collection of Schopenhauer’s essays.

Essay “On Books and Reading,” public-domain English text.

The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The preceding sentence says a person must first learn something before turning it over in the mind.

The Art of Literature, section “On Style,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The following discussion criticizes overloaded parenthetical sentence construction.

The Art of Literature, section “On Style,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The English volume rearranges material drawn from Schopenhauer’s Parerga.

A Theologico-Political Treatise — Part III, Chapter XIV, paragraph 77, Project Gutenberg #991. The frozen catalog preserves the opening of Spinoza’s longer sentence; the paragraph continues by condemning teachings tending toward obstinacy, hatred, strife and anger and praising justice and charity. This is seventeenth-century theological / political philosophy, not a modern empirical claim.

The Problems of Philosophy, Chapter XV, “The Value of Philosophy,” printed page 242 / scan leaf 246 in the 1912 Williams & Norgate edition on Wikisource, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #5827. “The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty” begins Russell’s concluding account of how philosophical doubt can loosen unexamined certainty; this is philosophical argument, not an empirical psychological finding.

The Problems of Philosophy, Chapter XV, “The Value of Philosophy,” closing paragraph, beginning on printed page 249 / scan leaf 253 in the fully validated 1912 Williams & Norgate Wikisource scan, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #5827. “These questions enlarge our conception of what is possible...” explains why Russell values philosophical questions even when definite answers cannot usually be established; it remains an epistemological and educational-philosophical claim rather than a measured outcome guarantee.

Pensées; Pascal contrasts forms of knowing associated with the heart and with discursive reason.

How Substances Can Be Good in Virtue of Their Existence Without Being Absolute Goods (De Hebdomadibus), preliminary proposition IX, H. F. Stewart / E. K. Rand 1918 edition, Project Gutenberg #13316. Kept as a historical metaphysical premise, not social-science evidence.

The Consolation of Philosophy, Book III, Chapter XI, H. R. James translation (Elliot Stock, 1897), printed page 149 in Project Gutenberg #14328. Lady Philosophy reaches ‘All things, then, seek the good’ after arguing that things naturally seek continued existence and unity, and that unity and goodness are the same. This remains late-antique metaphysical/philosophical argument mediated by translation, not an empirical description of every human motive or modern behavioral science.

The Future of the American Negro, Chapter VIII; Project Gutenberg #26507. The sentence appears in Washington’s closing policy discussion immediately after his summary of dangers and immediately before his qualification that he may also be in some degree right.

Working With the Hands, Chapter I; Project Gutenberg #64504. This short excerpt precedes Washington’s discussion of poverty, family responsibility and practical education.

Great Expectations (1861), global Chapter XL / Volume III Chapter I in the Chapman & Hall three-volume first book edition. Mr. Jaggers tells Pip “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule” while insisting that he has stayed to the strict line of fact about Pip’s benefactor. Verified against the scan-backed Wikisource Volume III Chapter I transcription and cross-checked with Project Gutenberg #1400. This remains fictional legal dialogue and character method rather than a modern legal or scientific standard.

The Simple Life, Chapter IV, “Simplicity of Speech,” Mary Louise Hendee translation, Project Gutenberg #23092; Wagner criticizes language that replaces fact with display.

Analects 2:15 in James Legge’s translation; the saying balances study with independent reflection.

A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section III, “Of the Influencing Motives of the Will,” Project Gutenberg #4705. The frozen catalog retains the opening clause “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” from a longer sentence. It remains Hume’s historical philosophical thesis rather than contemporary empirical psychology.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, ‘Of Miracles,’ Part I, paragraph 87 in the represented Selby-Bigge text, Project Gutenberg #9662. ‘A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence’ follows Hume's discussion of varying degrees of assurance from experience. It is eighteenth-century epistemological argument and preserves the connective ‘therefore’; it is not a complete modern statistical or scientific decision rule.

A Room with a View, Chapter XIV, Project Gutenberg #2641. The frozen catalog wording is a clause extract from the narrator’s longer sentence: “Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome ‘nerves’ or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.” The passage concerns Lucy Honeychurch’s self-deception in fiction, not modern psychological evidence.

Poems of Cheer, “As You Go Through Life,” represented 1914 edition; Project Gutenberg #3238. The poem explicitly acknowledges that things go wrong, so the line is about chosen attention rather than denial.

“A Well,” Poems: Third Series (1896), Project Gutenberg #12242. The ghost and haunted-house language is metaphorical, emphasizing nature's unresolved mystery.

“Earth Is Short,” Poems: First Series (1890), Project Gutenberg #12242. The poem proceeds into questions about heaven and God; its religious questions remain questions rather than verified metaphysical claims.

Enchiridion 5; English wording varies by translation.

Of Studies; the sentence is shortened by omitting Bacon’s middle clause about talk and discourse.

Of Studies, in Bacon’s instructions for how different kinds of books should be read.

Francis Bacon, 'Of Truth,' essay I in the 1625 Essays; independently checked against the validated 1884 Works of Francis Bacon, Volume I scan leaf 139. The retained sentence closes Bacon's theological/philosophical truth discussion by linking charity, providence and truth; it is explicitly early-modern Christian-philosophical rhetoric, not clinical or scientific evidence.

Narrative, Chapter VII; Douglass describes the effect of reading political dialogue and Sheridan’s speech on Catholic emancipation.

Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 156, Helen Zimmern translation.

Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 483, “The Enemies of Truth”; Helen Zimmern translation, 1909 edition.

Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 601, “Learning to Love”; Helen Zimmern translation; this record uses the opening sentence.

Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 2; Helen Zimmern translation.

Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 515, “From Experience”; Helen Zimmern translation.

Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 579, “Unsuitable For a Party-man”; Helen Zimmern translation.

Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 578, “Partial Knowledge”; Helen Zimmern translation; sentence shortened before the final clause about popularity and persuasion.

Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 485, “Decided Character”; Helen Zimmern translation.

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 274; Thomas Common translation.

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 270; Thomas Common translation. The formula has a longer classical and Nietzschean history, so this record is tied specifically to this occurrence.

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 290, “One Thing is Needful”; Thomas Common translation in the 1910 Oscar Levy edition.

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 196; Thomas Common translation.

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 275; Thomas Common translation.

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 269; Thomas Common translation.

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 299; Thomas Common translation in the represented 1910 English edition.

The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 334; Thomas Common translation. The surrounding passage compares learning to love music with learning to love people and oneself.

Crime and Punishment, Part I, Chapter I, printed page 2 / Wikisource scan leaf 34, Constance Garnett translation in the scan-backed 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction / P. F. Collier & Son edition, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #2554. Raskolnikov thinks “Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most” while walking toward the pawnbroker during his contemplated “rehearsal”; the line remains morally compromised fictional interior monologue rather than generic motivational advice.

Crime and Punishment, Part III, Chapter I, printed page 203 / Wikisource scan leaf 235, Constance Garnett translation in the scan-backed 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction / P. F. Collier & Son edition, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #2554. Razumihin argues that going wrong in one’s own way is better than going right in someone else’s while defending the role of making one’s own errors in reaching truth; it remains energetic fictional character dialogue rather than direct Dostoevsky autobiography.

Notes from Underground, Part I, Chapter IX, Constance Garnett translation. The “twice two makes five” line immediately follows the narrator’s complaint about mathematical certainty. Verified against Project Gutenberg #600 and the 1918 Heinemann White Nights and Other Stories Wikisource text.

Notes from Underground, Part I, Chapter II, Constance Garnett translation. The Underground Man calls excessive consciousness “an illness—a real thorough-going illness.” Verified against Project Gutenberg #600 and the 1918 Heinemann White Nights and Other Stories Wikisource text; this is fictional first-person polemic, not a clinical diagnosis.

‘Maxims for Revolutionists,’ under the heading ‘REASON,’ appended to Man and Superman and represented by Project Gutenberg #26107. Shaw contrasts the ‘reasonable’ man who adapts to the world with the ‘unreasonable’ man who tries to adapt the world to himself, then gives the deliberately provocative conclusion that progress depends on the latter. It is epigrammatic polemic rather than an empirical rule that unreasonable conduct reliably produces progress.

Adam Bede, Book Second, Chapter XVII, “In Which the Story Pauses a Little,” Project Gutenberg #507. “Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult” appears in Eliot’s narrator-level defence of realistic representation and the difficulty of saying the exact truth about people and feelings. It is literary-aesthetic argument inside the novel, not an empirical psychology result.

Daniel Deronda; narrator’s ironic observation while Gwendolen speculates about Grandcourt, represented from Project Gutenberg #7469.

Middlemarch; the narrator contrasts narrow judgment with considering a subject from several points of view.

The Diary of a Nobody, Chapter I, April 6 entry; Project Gutenberg #1026. Immediately after Borset leaves, Charles Pooter thinks of the “splendid answer” he should have given and decides to save it for another occasion. This is the same continuous comic exchange as the preceding Borset record and illustrates Pooter’s delayed wit rather than generic communication advice.

The Physical Basis of Mind, chapter on consciousness and unconsciousness; Project Gutenberg #60212. Lewes is discussing ambiguity of scientific terms, so the line supports communication and conceptual clarity rather than a claim that all disputes are merely verbal.

The Physical Basis of Mind, Problem I, “The Study of Psychology,” in the discussion of modern scientific method; Project Gutenberg #60212. The wording belongs to Lewes’s 1877 framework, not current philosophy-of-science consensus.

The Principles of Success in Literature, Chapter II, “The Principle of Vision,” Project Gutenberg #10420, in the 1891 volume edited by Fred Newton Scott. “All good Literature rests primarily on insight” opens Lewes’s claim that authentic literary expression depends on seeing and feeling for oneself. It is historical literary criticism rather than an experimentally established law of creativity.

The Principles of Success in Literature, chapter on Style, Project Gutenberg #10420; the sentence follows Lewes’s assertion that good style must be sincere.

The Principles of Success in Literature, chapter on Style, Project Gutenberg #10420; capitalization of “THROUGH” follows the represented Gutenberg transcription.

The Principles of Success in Literature, chapter on Style, Project Gutenberg #10420; Lewes is warning writers against imitating Cicero, Titian or other masters.

Soliloquies in England, “Dickens”; Santayana uses caricature to describe the gap between living reality and conventional masks.

The Sense of Beauty (1896), Part IV, §48, ‘Expression defined,’ Project Gutenberg #26842. §48 begins on printed page 192 and §49 begins on page 198; the retained sentence occurs late in §48 after Santayana argues that expression depends on associations and on what the observer’s imagination can supply. No narrower printed page is asserted without an independently verified page break. This remains historical aesthetic/philosophical psychology, not modern intelligence testing, neuroscience or evidence that more intelligent observers always make objectively better interpretations.

The World I Live In (1908), Chapter I, “The Seeing Hand,” printed page 7, Project Gutenberg #27683. Keller writes that ideas make the world we live in and impressions furnish ideas while explaining how touch-sensations, associations and imagination construct her experienced world.

A Doll’s House, Act III, R. Farquharson Sharp translation, Project Gutenberg #15492. Nora Helmer says she must think things over for herself during the final confrontation with Torvald, after saying she must educate herself and stand alone. This is fictional dramatic speech, not Ibsen autobiography or contemporary family / legal guidance.

Ghosts, Act II, R. Farquharson Sharp public-domain translation, Project Gutenberg #2467. Mrs. Alving says “And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us” immediately after describing inherited “old dead ideas” and beliefs as ghosts. The light is a dramatic metaphor within a conflict over family, duty and conventional belief, not a clinical claim.

Walden, Conclusion; Thoreau uses the sentence while arguing that familiar human views do not exhaust reality.

Opticks, Query 30, represented from the fourth corrected edition text (1730) by Inters.org. Newton states this as a question within his historical natural-philosophy speculation; it is not presented as a modern account of particle physics or matter–energy conversion.

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, General Scholium, added to the second edition in 1713; represented by the 1846 Andrew Motte English translation on Wikisource. “I frame no hypotheses” is kept inside Newton’s specific discussion of gravity and experimental philosophy rather than treated as a blanket prohibition on hypotheses in modern science.

The Admirable Crichton, Act I, Project Gutenberg #3490. Ernest Woolley repeatedly delivers “I am not young enough to know everything” as a self-consciously clever epigram while Agatha, Treherne and the others struggle to understand it; Crichton later says he has no idea what Ernest meant. It remains fictional comic dialogue rather than J. M. Barrie autobiography or a factual claim about age and knowledge.

All These Things Added (1903), Part II, “The Heavenly Life,” chapter “Perfect Freedom,” printed page 138 / Wikisource scan leaf 144. “By self-enlightenment is Perfect Freedom found” opens Allen’s argument that inward self-knowledge and self-mastery are prerequisites for the freedom he describes. The explicitly religious and moral framework is retained rather than converted into modern political, clinical or psychological guidance.

Out from the Heart; Allen lists contrasting mental conditions while arguing that the inner life strongly shapes experience.

Out from the Heart, “Mental Conditions and Their Effects,” represented New York R. F. Fenno & Company edition, Project Gutenberg #74178. The sentence introduces Allen’s table of harmful and beneficial mental conditions; its moral-philosophical categories are preserved as historical argument rather than modern psychological diagnosis.

The Way of Peace; Allen links self-mastery with clearer perception and a less distorted relationship to circumstances and other people.

The Way of Peace, “The Power of Meditation”; Allen closes his account of meditation by connecting sustained contemplation with knowledge of truth and profound peace.

Wake-Robin; the phrase belongs to Burroughs’s description of the naturalist’s expectant attention to the world nearby.

Wake-Robin; Burroughs describes the anticipatory state created by close engagement with birds, seasons, and other natural signs.

Democracy and Education (1916), Chapter XI, “Experience and Thinking.” Dewey describes experience as a relation between doing and undergoing consequences, then immediately qualifies the active-passive formulation by saying that valuable experience includes cognition insofar as relationships and continuities are perceived. Verified against Project Gutenberg #852 and the scan-backed Wikisource Chapter XI transcription. The sentence is not a denial that cognition matters and is not presented as modern neuroscientific evidence.

Democracy and Education (1916), Chapter XXII, “The Individual and the World.” Dewey defines the educational sense of freedom through the personal part played by thinking in learning—intellectual initiative, independent observation, invention, foresight and adaptation—while also arguing that this mental freedom requires room for exploration and movement. Verified against Project Gutenberg #852 and the scan-backed Wikisource Chapter XXII transcription. This is historical educational philosophy, not a modern clinical or legal definition of autonomy.

How We Think (1910), Chapter VIII, “Judgment: The Interpretation of Facts,” section 1, printed page 106, Project Gutenberg #37423. Dewey says the thinker must choose among candidate meanings for a perplexing situation and therefore accepts risk; the prudent thinker selects warily and remains answerable to later confirmation or frustration. This is part of Dewey’s historical educational/logical account of reflective judgment, not a modern decision-science finding.

Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Part Four, Section III, “What is Freedom?”, printed page 304, Project Gutenberg #41386. Dewey states “Intelligence is the key to freedom in act” while arguing that effective action depends on consulting conditions and forming plans that enlist their cooperation; the following page stresses study, foresight and adaptation. This is historical philosophical / social-psychological argument rather than current neuroscientific or experimentally settled behavioral evidence.

A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire, represented in Project Gutenberg #2615. 'Satire is of the nature of moral philosophy, as being instructive' occurs inside Dryden's comparison of Persius, Juvenal and Horace, immediately before his account of Persius's Stoic moral teaching. The source does not expose a formal subsection corresponding to the queue parser's incidental 'Discourse C' clue, so this record is routed directly to the reviewed passage without inventing a structural heading. It remains Restoration literary criticism and moral theory rather than a timeless definition binding every modern satire.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn,” closing lines.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Book I, Chapter I, section 6, Project Gutenberg #10615. Locke follows his sounding-line analogy by saying that our business is not to know all things but those concerning conduct. The passage belongs to seventeenth-century epistemology and moral reflection, not a modern cognitive-science finding.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Part VIII, section 118. Locke calls children's curiosity an appetite after knowledge and gives practical directions for encouraging questions. The passage remains seventeenth-century educational/parenting counsel rather than contemporary developmental-science or guaranteed learning-outcome evidence.

Areopagitica, Project Gutenberg #608. The sentence appears in Milton’s argument against licensing and prior restraint on printing. It is a defense of open intellectual encounter, not a claim that every expression is harmless or beyond later judgment.

Areopagitica, in Milton’s defense of a city actively reading, discussing, and testing ideas.