Thomas Reid Quotes

When We Contemplate The World Of Epicurus, And Conceive The Universe To Be A Fortuitous Jumble Of Atoms, There Is Nothing Grand In This Idea. The Clashing Of Atoms By Blind Chance Has Nothing In It Fit To Raise Our Conceptions, Or To Elevate The Mind. But The Regular Structure Of A Vast System Of Beings, Produced By Creating Power, And Governed By The Best Laws Which Perfect Wisdom And Goodness Could Contrive, Is A Spectacle Which Elevates The Understanding, And Fills The Soul With Devout Admiration.

I Wanted To Be A Part Of The Downtown Renaissance.

I Sit In My Loft With The Haves And Look Out At The Have-nots - The Bottom Of The Bottom - And I Have To Rationalize It, ... Am I Pushing Out The Homeless?

It Is The Invaluable Merit Of The Great Basle Mathematician Leonard Euler, To Have Freed The Analytical Calculus From All Geometric Bounds, And Thus To Have Established Analysis As An Independent Science, Which From His Time On Has Maintained An Unchallenged Leadership In The Field Of Mathematics.

It Is A Question Of Fact, Whether The Influence Of Motives Be Fixed By Laws Of Nature, So That They Shall Always Have The Same Effect In The Same Circumstances.

[i]f A Man Bred To The Seafaring Life, And Accustomed To Think And Talk Only Of Matters Relating To Navigation, Enters Into Discourse Upon Any Other Subject; It Is Well Known, That The Language And The Notions Proper To His Own Profession Are Infused Into Every Subject, And All Things Are Measured By The Rules Of Navigation: And If He Should Take It Into His Head To Philosophize Concerning The Faculties Of The Mind, It Cannot Be Doubted, But He Would Draw His Notions From The Fabric Of The Ship, And Would Find In The Mind, Sails, Masts, Rudder, And Compass.

It Appears Evident, Therefore, That Those Actions Only Can Truly Be Called Virtuous, And Deserving Of Moral Approbation, Which The Agent Believed To Be Right, And To Which He Was Influenced, More Or Less, By That Belief.

Every Theory In Philosophy, Which Is Built On Pure Conjecture, Is An Elephant; And Every Theory That Is Supported Partly By Fact, And Partly By Conjecture, Is Like Nebuchadnezzar's Image, Whose Feet Were Partly Of Iron, And Partly Of Clay.

For, Until The Wisdom Of Men Bear Some Proportion To The Wisdom Of God, Their Attempts To Find Out The Structure Of His Works, By The Force Of Their Wit And Genius, Will Be Vain.

For The Perception Of The Beautiful We Have The Term "taste"--a Metaphor Taken From That Which Is Passive In The Body And Transferred To That Which Is Active In The Mind.

We Find Sects And Parties In Most Branches Of Science; And Disputes Which Are Carried On From Age To Age, Without Being Brought To An Issue. Sophistry Has Been More Effectually Excluded From Mathematics And Natural Philosophy Than From Other Sciences. In Mathematics It Had No Place From The Beginning; Mathematicians Having Had The Wisdom To Define Accurately The Terms They Use, And To Lay Down, As Axioms, The First Principles On Which Their Reasoning Is Grounded. Accordingly, We Find No Parties Among Mathematicians, And Hardly Any Disputes.

A Philosopher Is, No Doubt, Entitled To Examine Even Those Distinctions That Are To Be Found In The Structure Of All Languages... In That Case, Such A Distinction May Be Imputed To A Vulgar Error, Which Ought To Be Corrected In Philosophy.