“We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.”
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), II : The Starting-Point
Context: The truth is sum, ergo cogito — I am, therefore I think, although not everything that is thinks. Is not consciousness of thinking above all consciousness of being? Is pure thought possible, without consciousness of self, without personality? Can there exist pure knowledge without feeling, without that species of materiality which feelings lends to it? Do we not perhaps feel thought, and do we not feel ourselves in the act of knowing and willing? Could not the man in the stove [Descartes] have said: "I feel, therefore I am"? or "I will, therefore I am"? And to feel oneself, is it not perhaps to feel oneself imperishable?
“We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.”
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
“The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.”
Yahia Lababidi (1973)
Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)
Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist
Context: To think what we do not feel is to lie to ourselves, in the same way that we lie to others when we say to others what we do not think. Everything we think must be thought with our entire being, body, and soul.
“So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.”
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 10
“I still feel that we should act with restraint. It’s much easier not to do than to undo.”
Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer
Section 12 (p. 218)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)