logo

Quotes About Syllogisms

Aristotle called these true deductive inferences syllogisms. All syllogisms follow the same basic structure as the "Socrates is mortal" example. Each contains two premises or assumptions (called major and minor) and the inescapable conclusion we have to draw from them.
~ Arthur Herman
I live by syllogisms: God is love. Love is blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God. I don't know what I'd believe in if it wasn't for that.
~ Stephen Colbert
Rhetoric uses syllogisms and other suasions to bring about a change of heart and of mind.
~ Karl Keating
Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds
~ Thomas Hardy
To each memorable image you attach a thought, a label, a category, a piece of the cosmic furniture, syllogisms, an enormous sorites, chains of apothegms, strings of hypallages, rosters of zeugmas, dances of hysteron proteron, apophantic logoi, hierarchic stoichea, processions of equinoxes and parallaxes, herbaria, genealogies of gymnosophists—and so on, to infinity.
~ Umberto Eco
Oh, come off your perch! said the other man, who wore glasses. Your premises won't come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who apply bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical conclusions skallybootin' into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can't pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it.
~ O. Henry
It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms.
~ Voltaire