Showing posts with label reasoning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reasoning. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Post #1517

There are those who never reason on what they should do, but what they have done ; as if reason had her eyes behind, and could only see backwards.
—Henry Fielding

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Post #1463

Though reason is not to be relied upon as universally sufficient to direct us what to do, yet it is generally to be relied upon and obeyed where it tells us what we are not to do.
—Robert South

Monday, August 26, 2013

Post #1326

Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.
—Thomas Huxley

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Post #1293

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.
—José Ortega y Gasset

Monday, August 13, 2012

Post #1032

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
—Rabindranath Tagore

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Post #977

He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.
—Sir William Drummond

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Post #964

The heart has reasons of which reason has no knowledge.
—Blaise Pascal

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Post #804

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less than looking.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader. Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live — lives.
written by Theodore F. MacManus

A deadly viper once bit a hole snipe's hide; But 'twas the viper, not the snipe, that died.

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One From the Archives

Post #1234

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied...

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