It would be a mighty advantage accruing to the public from this inquiry that all these would very much excel and arrive at great perfection in their several kinds, which I think is manifest from what I have already shown, and shall enforce by this one plain instance, that even I myself, the author of these momentous truths, am a person whose imaginations are hard-mouthed and exceedingly disposed to run away with his reason, which I have observed from long experience to be a very light rider, and easily shook off; upon which account my friends will never trust me alone without a solemn promise to vent my speculations in this or the like manner, for the universal benefit of human kind, which perhaps the gentle, courteous, and candid reader, brimful of that modern charity and tenderness usually annexed to his office, will be very hardly persuaded to believe.

Full text.

• Reasoning will never make a man correct an opinion that they have not reasoned themselves into.
• Men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion that they have not reasoned themselves into.
• Reasoning will never make a man correct an opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.
• It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he never was reasoned into.
• We may never reason a man out of an opinion which he was never reasoned into.
• You cannot reason a man out of what he never reasoned himself into.
• You can’t reason someone out of something they weren’t reasoned into.
• He cannot be reasoned out of error, if he was not at first reasoned into it.
• What has not been reasoned in, cannot be reasoned out.
• Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was never reasoned into him and it never can be reasoned out of him.
• It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of anything he was never reasoned into.