Logic Quotes

You can't win. Logic has no power over her when her territory has been invaded by heathens.

~ Mira Grant

Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion - thus:Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; Therefore-Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.This may be called syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

~ Ambrose Bierce

I know that if you don't look for an alternative, Sophos, you certainly won't find one.

~ Megan Whalen Turner

An argument in apologetics, when actually used in dialogue, is an extension of the arguer. The arguer's tone, sincerity, care, concern, listening, and respect matter as much as his or her logic - probably more. The world was won for Christ not by arguments but by sanctity: What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say.

~ Peter Kreeft

His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Cynicism, like gullibility, is a symptom of underdeveloped critical faculties.

~ Jamie Whyte

The explanations for the things we do in life are many and complex. Supposedly mature adults should live by logic, listen to their reason. Think things out before they act.But maybe they never heard what Dr. London told me one, Freud said that for the little things in life we should react according to our reason. But for really big decisions, we should heed what our unconscious tells us.

~ Erich Segal

It is obvious that [leftists] are not cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality.

~ Theodore J. Kaczynski

There is no logic in logics except an illogical logic.

~ Santosh Kalwar

I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescing and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic. I am pouring it over myself by the bucketload but the logic sizzles on the hot bearings and dissipates elusive white steam into the air.

~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

We are raised in a society where we are taught to believe a more logical reason for an illogical happening rather than the illogical reason for something which may be of the unknown, hence, why the logical answer is illogical to the logical person.

~ Nicholas A. Mcgirr

He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.

~ Julian Barnes

It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.

~ Douglas Adams

Persistence wears down resistance.

~ William J. Federer

For nothing is more democratic than logic, it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When you kill a man, You steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, Rob his children of a father.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Wrong way to think about it. Don't try to figure it out all at once.

~ Jed Rubenfeld

There can never be surprises in logic.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Logic may be conceived as ruling out what is absolutely impossible, and thus determining the field of what in the absence of empirical knowledge is abstractly possible.

~ Morris F. Cohen

I went out into the corridor. I asked a nurse if she knew where the people with arthritis went. She said lots of them went to Ward 34 on the top floor. She said she thought that was a silly place to put people with bad bones who had such trouble walking and climbing stairs.

~ David Almond

To Americans, either/or means both.

~ Brian Spellman

Baby rats need rat milk, baby cats need cat milk, baby dogs need dog milk, baby humans need human milk, baby cows need cow milk, baby chimps need chimp milk.. Would anyone believe it if someone claimed adult giraffes need elephant milk? or adult horses need squirrel milk? or adult possums need goat milk? or adult humans need cow milk? oh, wait, no, that last one makes total sense.. NOT

~ Mango Wodzak

This meaning-argument is of a very different kind from the arguments I have been speaking about so far. The premise entails the conclusion all right, but it is so astoundingly false that it defies criticism, at first, by the simple method of taking the reader's breath away. This was a method which the neo-Hegelian idealists later perfected: reasoning from a sudden and violent solecism. Say or imply, for example, that in English “value” means the same as “individuality.” You can be miles down the track of your argument before they get their breath back. This method is not only physiologically but ethologically sound. Of course it should never be used first. You need first to earn the respect of your readers, by some good reasoning, penetrating observations, or the like: then apply the violent solecism. Tell them, for example, that when we say of something that it is a prime number, we mean that it was born out of wedlock. You cannot go wrong this way. Decent philosophers will be so disconcerted by this, that they will never do the one thing they should do: simply say, “That is NOT what ‘prime number’ means!” Instead, they will always begin … [by] casting about for an excuse for someone’s saying what you said, or a half-excuse, or a one-eighth excuse; nor is there any danger that they will search in vain.

~ David Stove

If you can say it... it's obvious.

~ Deyth Banger

Now, me lord, you know you oughtn’t talk like that at this hour of the morning. Yougot to pardon his lordship, sir,” he said apologetically to Jones. “His father—theduke, you know—had him schooled in logic. He can’t really help it, like.” Spoken by a most loyal valet, Tom Bryd, in defense of the inherit workings of the mind of his employer, Lord John Grey

~ Diana Gabaldon

Maybe we should remember that logic constructs a box that is far too small for wonder to take up residence in. Therefore, the crucial question is, ‘Will we choose to live there if wonder cannot?

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Sometimes I think humans have a common sense that completely defies logic.

~ Mango Wodzak

You can be an expert on anything if you just use logic.

~ Adam Carolla

I have researched aboriginal culture, Mayan hieroglyphics and the corporate culture of a Japanese car manufacturer, and I have written essays on the internal logic of various other societies, but I haven't a clue about my own logic.

~ Deborah Levy

The world of being is unchangeable, rigid, exact, delightful to the mathematician, the logician, the builder of metaphysical systems, and all who love perfection more than life. The world of existence is fleeting, vague, without sharp boundaries, without any clear plan or arrangement, but it contains all thoughts and feelings, all the data of sense, and all physical objects, everything that can do either good or harm, everything that makes any difference to the value of life and the world. According to our temperaments, we shall prefer the contemplation of the one or of the other.

~ Bertrand Russell

Panic is more like protection from the danger, stuff when they don't go on plan it's a code on how much humans we are...

~ Deyth Banger

Holmes,” I cried, “this is impossible.” “Admirable!” he said. “A most illuminating remark. It IS impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Yet you saw for yourself. Can you suggest any fallacy?

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

To be completely objective we must say:All men are mortal.Lionel Samaratunga's son is a man.Therefore Lionel Samaratunga's son is mortal.So stated, it is quite generally true, and is the concern of no-one in particular. It is so generally true that it would serve in a textbook of logic as an example of a syllogism in Barbara (though usually, instead of Lionel Samaratunga's son, it is Socrates whose mortality is logically demonstrated).But how many students of logic are going to shed tears when they read that Lionel Samaratunga's son is destined to die? How many have so much as heard of Lionel Samaratunga, let alone of his son? (And anyway, how many students of logic shed a tear even over the death of Socrates, of whom they may perhaps have heard?) But if you were to come across this syllogism unexpectedly, it is not impossible that you might feel emotionally moved (as perhaps at this very moment you may be feeling a little uncomfortable at my having chosen an example so near home). And why should this be so? Because you are fond of Lionel Samaratunga's son and cannot regard this syllogism in Barbara, which speaks of his mortality, quite so objectively as a student of logic. In other words, as soon as feeling comes in at the door objectivity flies out the window. Feeling, being private and not public, is subjective and not objective.And the Buddha has said (A. III,61: i,176) that it is 'to one who feels' that he teaches the Four Noble Truths. So, then, the Dhamma must essentially refer to a subjective aniccatā—i.e. one that entails dukkha—and not, in any fundamental sense, to an objective aniccatā, which we can leave to students of logic and their professors. (Feeling is not a logical category at all.)

~ Nanavira Thera

Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any step will have no impact on the macro level.

~ Brian Clevinger

Of course, there is no conceivable way of getting by reason from the proposition I am losing interest in this to the proposition This is false.

~ C.s. Lewis

[I]f God as a subject is the determined, while the quality, the predicate, is determining, then in truth the rank of the godhead is due not to the subject, but to the predicate.

~ Ludwig Feuerbach

Truth as a logic structure is closer to simple and the further away from simple you get, the deeper and more nuanced an explanation will become until you reach a point where the energy is so high that no explanation is possible.

~ R. A. Delmonico

Academics place much more importance on rigorous logic. There is also admiration in the profession for subtle reasoning. And mastery of the craft shows itself in the elegance of the intellectual super-structure…. The practitioner, on the other hand, uses economic theory only to the extent that he finds it useful in comprehending the problem at hand, so that practical courses of action will emerge which can be evaluated not merely in narrow economic cost-benefit terms, but by taking into account a wider range of considerations…. A practitioner is not judged by the rigour of his logic or by the elegance of his presentation. He is judged by results.

~ Goh Keng Swee

My heart pounded annoyingly in my ears, and it was getting harder to stay focused. I'd almost gotten trapped in here, and now I'd come back. Sometimes I did have truly terrible ideas.

~ Gwenda Bond

Drinking myself blind seemed like the next logical step.

~ Justin Cronin