Philosophy Quotes

The word 'proof' should strictly only be used when we are dealing with deductive inferences.... Popper claimed that scientists only need to use deductive inferences.... So if a scientist is only interested in demonstrating that a given theory is false, she may be able to accomplish her goal without the use of inductive inferences.... When a scientist collects experimental data, her aim might be to show that a particular theory...is false. She will have to resort to inductive reasoning.... So Popper's attempt to show that science can get by without induction does not succeed.

~ Samir Okasha

But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

The most flattering spin I can put on this phase of paradoxes and metaphysical tangles is that I was smart enough, at age fourteen, to destroy any fledgling hypothesis I came up with. A tentative explanation, theory, or formulation would pop up in my brain only to be attacked by what amounted to a kind of logical immune system, bent on eliminating all that was weak or defective. Which is to say that my mind had become a scene of furious predation, littered with the half-eaten corpses of vast theories and brilliant syntheses.

~ Barbara Ehrenreich

I hate those Socratic dialogues where everything gets drawn out at the pace of an excessively logical snail.

~ Jo Walton

When somebody comes with a conclusion, then he looks through that conclusion and chooses only things which support his position.Logic is a prostitute.It can help anybody - for or against, it has no problem.

~ Osho

The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an illogical world would look like.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.

~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

We are fed ideas in small sound bites that are really just the conclusions of particular beliefs. We do not examine what underpins these sound bites. If the sound bites are presented by a source we are accustomed to accepting as true, there is a danger we will assimilate the conclusion without knowing, or caring, whether it is based on solid arguments and assumptions.

~ Stephen Mcandrew

There are no logical contradictions in the Christian faith. If there were even one logical contradiction at the center of the Christian faith, the Christian faith would be necessarily false.

~ Ronald H. Nash

If you play games with the law of non-contradiction, then every time you open your mouth and say anything, you're cheating. Every time you make a choice in life you're cheating.

~ Ronald H. Nash

A great deal of thought is only a substitute for the thoughts that the individual would really find useful at the time.

~ Idries Shah

Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.

~ Rudolf Carnap

Logic, it is often said, is the study of valid arguments. It is a systematic attempt to distinguish valid arguments from invalid arguments.

~ W.h. Newton-Smith

Paradoxes are less paradoxical in their reference to truth than most of the most plausible axioms.

~ Raheel Farooq

Religion and philosophy have different logics, speak different languages. Their logics are mutually exclusive, languages sometimes overlapping. It is hard to find something really common in them. I think I---a man in totally unconditional pursuit of happiness, whatever it is, wherever it lies---am only supposed to consider which of them has more in common with life!

~ Raheel Farooq

Intellect is limited, but it has one great merit; it can recognise its limits!

~ Raheel Farooq

The greatest of fools are those who fail to mark the invisible from the nonexistent.

~ Raheel Farooq

Intelligence is to spot paradoxes. Wisdom is to live by them.

~ Raheel Farooq

Ever since Plato most philosophers have considered it part of their business to produce ‘proofs’ of immortality and the existence of God. They have found fault with the proofs of their predecessors — Saint Thomas rejected Saint Anselm's proofs, and Kant rejected Descartes' — but they have supplied new ones of their own. In order to make their proofs seem valid, they have had to falsify logic, to make mathematics mystical, and to pretend that deepseated prejudices were heaven-sent intuitions.

~ Bertrand Russell

I have previously reduced the whole science of logic to two facts.The first is that our perceptions being every thing for us, we areperfectly, completely, and necessarily sure of whatever we actually feel.The second is that consequently none of our judgments, separatelytaken, can be erroneous: inasmuch as we see one idea in another it isactually there; but their falsity, when it takes place, is purely relativeto anterior judgments, which we permit to subsist; and it consists inthis, that we believe the idea in which we perceive a new element tobe the same as that we have always had under the same sign, when itis really different, since the new element which we actually see thereis incompatible with some of those which we have previously seen;so that to avoid contradiction we must either take away the former ornot admit the latter.

~ Antoine Destutt De Tracy

Turing attended Wittgenstein's lectures on the philosophy of mathematics in Cambridge in 1939 and disagreed strongly with a line of argument that Wittgenstein was pursuing which wanted to allow contradictions to exist in mathematical systems. Wittgenstein argues that he can see why people don't like contradictions outside of mathematics but cannot see what harm they do inside mathematics. Turing is exasperated and points out that such contradictions inside mathematics will lead to disasters outside mathematics: bridges will fall down. Only if there are no applications will the consequences of contradictions be innocuous. Turing eventually gave up attending these lectures. His despair is understandable. The inclusion of just one contradiction (like 0 = 1) in an axiomatic system allows any statement about the objects in the system to be proved true (and also proved false). When Bertrand Russel pointed this out in a lecture he was once challenged by a heckler demanding that he show how the questioner could be proved to be the Pope if 2 + 2 = 5. Russel replied immediately that 'if twice 2 is 5, then 4 is 5, subtract 3; then 1 = 2. But you and the Pope are 2; therefore you and the Pope are 1'! A contradictory statement is the ultimate Trojan horse.

~ John D. Barrow

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

I'm who i wasn't yesterday and who i won't be tomorrow.

~ Emmanuel Aghado

We are all running towards a destination which doesn't exist. On our way, dogs of life keep barking at us where we respond to some and some we throw stones at. Every dog teaches a lesson we are better off without. Every knife stabs a little deeper than we deserve. Every bruise stays a lot longer than it is meant to. Encumbered by forceful lessons of life we fight for the air of elation from the breaths we take to covert them into the moments of our real existence. Everything starts with life's tyrannical dominance and ends with our impelled submissiveness. We are the puppets of external circumstances and still we believe it's all on the inside. We should be laughing at our plight, someone has framed it with such sublimity. But all we do is ache at every shred of it because that's what keeps it alive.

~ Abhita Jain

A best friend is he who can emulate a dog but still can talk.

~ Debasish Mridha

I am not a teacher, I am a friend who cares.

~ Debasish Mridha

Buried deep within each one of us lies a treasure. It is our mission in this lifetime to find this treasure, but its exact location is known only by the dragon that guards it.

~ Lawren Leo

We need someone to thank and someone to blame; thus the concept of God and the Devil. We can't accept that everything that happens to us, is our own doing.

~ Hafsa Shah

You are a potential genius, so unleash your potential to release your genius.

~ Debasish Mridha

LATENT TALENTAnagram of complacencyKamil Ali

~ Kamil Ali

When someone is delusional, he or she can do anything to justify his or her beliefs.

~ Debasish Mridha M.d.

... science demands a terrible price - that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not.

~ David Brin

Dew moves mountains.

~ Cameron Conaway

A genius is no more—and no less—than someone who insists on the truth, while others face the other way.

~ Neel Burton

Philosophy is to the mind of the architect as eyesight to his steps. The Term 'genius' when applied to him simply means a man who understands what others only know about. A poet, artist or architect, necessarily 'understands' in this sense and is likely, if not careful, to have the term 'genius' applied to him; in which case he will no longer be thought human, trustworthy or companionable. Whatever may be his medium of expression he utters truth with manifest beauty of thought. If he is an architect, his building is natural. In him, philosophy and genius live by each other, but the combination is subject to popular suspicion and appellation 'genius' likely to settle him--so far as the public is concerned.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

There is no gap as wide as the one between mediocrity and genius.

~ Rutvik Oza

To me, the body says what words cannot. I believe that dance was the first art.

~ Martha Graham

I dance with hopes and sing along with possibilities.

~ Debasish Mridha

Be like a peacock and dance with all of your beauty.

~ Debasish Mridha