Thomas Reid Quotes

Every indication of wisdom, taken from the effect, is equally an indication of power to execute what wisdom planned.

In every case, we ought to act that part towards another, which we would judge to be right in him to act toward us, if we were in his circumstances and he in ours; or more generally - What we approve in others, that we ought to practise in like circumstances, what we condemn in others we ought not to do.

[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.

must acknowledge, that to act properly is much more valuable than to think justly or reason acutely.

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.

In every chain of reasoning, the evidence of the last conclusion can be no greater than that of the weakest link of the chain, whatever may be the strength of the rest.

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.

Every conjecture we can form with regard to the works of God has as little probability as the conjectures of a child with regard to the works of an adult.

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.

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.

The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The laws of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.

I wanted to be a part of the downtown renaissance.

And, if we have any evidence that the wisdom which formed the plan is in the man, we have the very same evidence, that the power which executed it is in him also.

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.

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. To this chiefly it is owing that we find sects and parties in most branches of science [and politics]; and disputes that are carried on from age to age, without being brought to issue.

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 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.

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.

The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.