Quotes about Reasoning

How many students who make it into the liberal arts and into philosophy classes still only manage to comprehend the content of these courses dogmatically, as simplisms to "believe"? Instead of grasping principles and values and an aristic ethos of clarity, they still only hear what pleases and flatters them: they grasp in Socrates or Plato the "countercultural" overtones that enable them to shower abuse on the diseased culture of their parents or peers, but they don't grasp at all the overwhelming obligation for themselves not to lie in orthodoxy's bed of sloth. They substitute, as opinionizers and slaves will do, one orthodoxy for another, imagining that the processes of "enlightenment" will change only the matter they think about and not the form of their own activity in reasoning. 

But nowadays, I know, that I have limitations. And that I know, that what I say and think now, might not be a true or valid as it will be tomorrow. My arguments for myself are just part of a flawless perfect reasoning. Which I haven't achieved yet. It is only trying to get close, to find that perfect argumentation that will eventually lead me to be exactly right. And have no doubts whatsoever of what I speak. I my eyes, such an argumentation, is either yet unconceivable, or so pervasive, that it defies the laws of nature. There are limits to knowledge and wisdom.

It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives

SETH said:  Now when you understand that intellectually, then the intellect can take for granted that its own information is not all the information you possess.  It can realize that its own knowledge  represents the tip of the iceberg.  As you apply that realization to your life you begin to realize furthermore that in practical terms you are indeed supported by a greater body of knowledge than you consciously realize, and by the magical, spontaneous fountain of action that forms your existence.  The intellect can then realize that it does not have to go it all alone.  Everything does not have to be reasoned out, even to be understood.