Thomas Reid
7 quotes
Biography
Thomas Reid was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher best known for his philosophical method, his theory of perception, and its wide implications on epistemology, and as the developer and defender of an agent-causal theory of free will. He also focused extensively on ethics, theory of action, language and philosophy of mind.
"The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house."
"There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words."
"Every indication of wisdom, taken from the effect, is equally an indication of power to execute what wisdom planned."
"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."
"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 foundation in nature; this surely is too fastidious a way of treating the common sense of mankind."
"If there is anything that can be called genius it consists chiefly in the ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides."
"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 a man."