Thomas Reid Quotes

15 quotes in 259 categories

• 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…
• 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,…
• must acknowledge, that to act properly is much more valuable than to think justly or reason acutely.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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,…
• The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
• Every indication of wisdom, taken from the effect, is equally an indication of power to execute what wisdom planned.
• There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.
• 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…
• But when, in the first setting out, he takes it for granted without proof, that distinctions found in the structure of all languages, have no…
• 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…

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