505 Logic Quotes

Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any Act of Parliament.

You can't have it both ways. Either our rights come from God, as our Declaration of Independence says, or they come from human choice. If they come from human choice, then our whole way of life is meaningless, it has no foundation.

What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.

Caution! Be very careful of false, meaningless, self-contradictory, and not even very funny warnings, like this one.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words, by a combination derived, of course, from the words for the simple things that enter in, one word for each simple component.

A great part of its theories derives an additional charm from the peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain concealed.

I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible.

When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.

I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it.

Reason, it is true, is DICTATOR in the Society of Mankind; from her there ought to lie no Appeal; But here we want a Pope in our Philosophy, to be the infallible Judge of what is or is not Reason.

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

Reality trumps rationality.

If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either.

The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random.

Woman's inaptitude for reasoning has not prevented her from arriving at truth; nor has man's ability to reason prevented him from floundering in absurdity.

We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.

Aristotle... a mere bond-servant to his logic, thereby rendering it contentious and well nigh useless.

The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.

Since my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions (as the common logic does), but that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter; so that this science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things.

If what was supposed to have been destroyed in Paradise was destructible, then it was not decisive; but if it was indestructible, then we are living in a false belief.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

If the Cincinnati Reds were really the first major league baseball team, who did they play?

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.

I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.

It's true the Iraqis misbehaved and had no credibility but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were in the wrong.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was able to reason.

He confronts a basic tool of the measurers-the statistical technique called factor analysis, developed by the influential English psychologist Charles Spearman-and demonstrates persuasively how factor analysis led to the cardinal error in reasoning of confusing correlation with cause, or, to put it another way, of attributing false concreteness to the abstract. It is this sort of performance that makes the book's eventual refutation of Arthur Jensen seem incidental, for it is far more absorbing to have our powers of reason challenged than it is to have our social consciences shaken.

'Yes, but not in the South', with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person.

I was going 70 miles an hour and got stopped by a cop who said, 'Do you know the speed limit is 55 miles per hour?' 'Yes, officer, but I wasn't going to be out that long...'

I went into this bar and sat down next to a pretty girl. She looked at me and said, 'Hey, you have two different colored socks on.' I said, 'Yeah, I know, but to me they're the same because I go by thickness.'

I worked as a parking attendant at Logan Airport, I parked jets. They had to let me go though because I kept locking the keys in them. One day I was on an 86 foot stepladder trying to get in the window with a coat hanger.

'Every undistorted relationship, perhaps indeed the conciliation that is part of organic life itself, is a gift. He who through consequential logic becomes incapable of it, makes himself a thing and freezes.'

I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything... but I don't see my way to your conclusion.

You have to be logical. You know? If I know that in this hotel room they have food every day, and I'm knocking on the door every day to eat, and they open the door, let me see the party, let me see them throwing salami all over, I mean, just throwing food around, but they're telling me there's no food.

A mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures; often he cannot. He is not even a man who can readily perform the transformation of equations by the use of calculus. He is primarily an individual who is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, and especially he is a man of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes he employs.

Whenever logical processes of thought are employed- that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove- there is an opportunity for the machine. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students' souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.

'He's a child and he has to sit in a car seat.' (Talking about Hornswoggle to Coachman)

Un bon mot ne prouve rien.

First, then, God, being all-just, wishes to do justice; being all-wise, knows what justice is; being all-powerful, can do justice. Why then injustice? Either your God can do justice and won't or doesn't know what justice is, or he cannot do it. The immediate reply is: 'What appears to be injustice in our eyes, in the sight of omniscience may be justice. God's ways are not our ways.' Oh, but if he is the all-wise pattern, they should be; what is good enough for God ought to be good enough for man; but what is too mean for man won't do in a God.

Man: 'I understand you buried your wife several years ago.' WC: 'Yes, I had to. She died.' (from the film Poppy)

The bad debater never knows that one explanation is better than five.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Sonja: Boris, Let me show you how absurd your position is. Let's say there is no God, and each man is free to do exactly as he chooses.What prevents you from murdering somebody? Boris: Murder's immoral. Sonja: Immorality is subjective. Boris: Yes, but subjectivity is objective. Sonja: Not in a rational scheme of perception. Boris: Perception is irrational. It implies immanence. Sonja: But judgment of any system of phenomena exists in any rational, metaphysical or epistemological contradiction to an abstracted empirical concept such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself, or of the thing itself. Boris: Yeah, I've said that many times.

Boris: (a) Socrates is a man.(b) All men are mortal.(c) All men are Socrates. That means all men are homosexuals. I'm not a homosexual. Once, some Cossacks whistled at me. I happen to have the kind of body that excites both persuasions.

Death is a state of non-being. That which is not, does not exist. Therefore death does not exist. Only truth exists. Truth and beauty. Each is interchangeable, but are aspects of themselves. Er, what specifically did they say they had in mind for me?

The only reason I need these gloves is cause of my hands.

Using a point to show that a point is not a point is not as good as using a nonpoint to show that a point is not a point.

I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.

The arguments of the strong are valued more than the strongest arguments.

No one has ever told me precisely what is wrong with me. Morrell's method of cure is so logical that I have the greatest confidence in him. I shall follow his prescriptions to the letter.

Reason, an Ignis fatuus of the Mind, Which leaves the light of Nature, Sense, behind.

I only disbelieve the unbelievable

...provided we could define all terms. But this is impossible... We thus see that all linguistic schemes, if analyzed far enough, would depend on undefined terms.

'I ask you only why you find the belief inconvenient. I'm quite sure you can find no reason. Since it can only be useful, why do you not let yourself be persuaded? If God exists and you don't believe in Him, you will have made a mistake and disobeyed the commandment to believe in Him. If there is no God, you won't be any better off than the rest of us.' 'Oh yes I will be better off than you,' he answered, 'because if there is no God, the game is tied. But, on the contrary, if there is one, I can't have offended something I thought did not exist. Sin requires knowing or willing. Don't you see? Even the least wise would not take offense if some uncouth man insulted him as long as the man hadn't intended to, or had mistaken him for someone else, or wine had loosened his tongue. All the more reason then to ask: will God, who is all-imperturbable, get mad at us for not having recognized Him when He, himself, has denied us the means of knowing Him? 'But by all you believe, my little animal, if belief in God were so necessary and were of eternal importance to us, would God himself not infuse in everyone enlightenment as bright as the Sun, which hides from no one? Do we pretend that God wants to play hide-and-seek with us, like children calling 'Peekaboo, I see you!'? Does God put on a mask and then take it off? Does He disguise himself to some and reveal himself to others? That would be a God who is either silly or malicious.

Even if astrology had been a real science, I knew nothing about it. We find countless events in real history which would never have occurred if they had not been predicted. This is because we are the authors of our so-called destiny, and all the 'antecedent necessities' of the Stoics are chimerical; the argument which proves the power of destiny seems strong only because it is sophistical. Cicero laughed at it. Someone whom he had invited to dinner, who had promised to go, and who had not appeared, wrote to him that since he had not gone it was evident that he had not been iturus ('going to go'). Cicero answers him: Veni ergo cras, et veni etiamsi venturus non sis ('Then come tomorrow, and come even if you are not going to come'). At this date, when I am conscious that I rely entirely on my common sense, I owe this explanation to my reader, despite the axiom, Fata viam inveniunt ('Destiny finds the way'). If the fatalists are obliged by their own philosophy to consider the concatenation of all events necessary, a parte ante ('a priori'), what remains of man's moral freedom is nothing; and in that case he can neither earn merit nor incur guilt. I cannot in conscience admit that I am a machine.

Common Logic is the Grammar of the higher Speech, that is, of Thought; it examines merely the relations of ideas to one another, the Mechanics of Thought, the pure Physiology of ideas. Now logical ideas stand related to one another, like words without thoughts. Logic occupies itself with the mere dead Body of the Science of Thinking. - Metaphysics, again, is the Dynamics of Thought; treats of the primary Powers of Thought; occupies itself with the mere Soul of the Science of Thinking. Metaphysical ideas stand related to one another, like thoughts without words. Men often wondered at the stubborn Incompletibility of these two Sciences; each followed its own business by itself; there was a want everywhere, nothing would suit rightly with either. From the very first, attempts were made to unite them, as everything about them indicated relationship; but every attempt failed; the one or the other Science still suffered in these attempts, and lost its essential character. We had to abide by metaphysical Logic, and logical Metaphysic, but neither of them was as it should be.

Boys always argued as if they knew then had the forces of logic on their side, even when they were being completely irrational. Even when their 'Logic' defied the evidence

They were right even though there was no way, no sensible way, no logical way they could be right

You don't burn the house you want to dwell in. You don't sink the boat on which you ride

Causa latet, vis est notissima

Turkey leg or turkey leg...where for out though turkey leg (takes bite) In my stomache turkey leg

Some years ago I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers - because I am scientific I know all about flying saucers! I said 'I don't think there are flying saucers'. So my antagonist said, 'Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?' 'No', I said, 'I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely'. At that he said, 'You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?' But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. To define what I mean, I might have said to him, 'Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.' It is just more likely. That is all.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Every generalization is false, including this one.

There are three kinds of lies - Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

What do you want to have me shot for, Semyon Mikhailovich? If you don't find me suitable as chief of the operations department, then give me a combat division. I am a commander; I can command a division. But what would be the advantage of having me shot?

If my uncle had wheels and pedals, he'd be a bicycle. We really can't engage in 'if's.

I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous- everyone hasn't met me yet.

Her reasoning is full of tricks And butterfly suggestions, I know no point to which she sticks; She begs the simplest questions, And, when her premises are strong She always draws her inference wrong.

Fuck rational thinking.

Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he should have used it.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

My father was never proud of me. One day he asked me, 'How old are you?' I said, 'I'm five.' He said, 'When I was your age, I was six.'

I am not keeping back facts. Every fact that I know is in your possession. You can draw your own deductions from them.

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.

Exactly! It is absurd - improbable - it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! one cannot escape from the facts.

None of the Marxist concepts (literally - not a single one!) matches the logical rules of scientific concepts.

Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things. It has to insist on the scrutiny of the ultimate ideas, and on the retention of the whole of the evidence in shaping our cosmological scheme. Its business is to render explicit, and - so far as may be - efficient, a process which otherwise is unconsciously performed without rational tests.

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

The term many presupposes the term one, and the term one presupposes the term many.

Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think.

Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.