Quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.

I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.

We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.

There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror.

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

To a great mind, nothing is little.

From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.

Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.

I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.

When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.

There is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman.

It is not that I think or believe, but that I know.

One forms provisional theories and waits for time or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but human nature is weak. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.

If the fresh facts come to our knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a solution. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.

We all learn by experience, and your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.

Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.

The grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.

The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.