Quotes About Logic

As a logical thinker, I cannot help thinking, based on the evidence, that many people who exhibit dramatic reactions to bad news involving strangers are hypocrites. That troubles me. People like that hear bad news from across the world, and they burst into wails and tears as though their own children have just been run over by a bus. To me, they don't seem very different from actors and actresses—they are able to burst into tears on command, but does it really mean anything?

As a logical thinker, I cannot help thinking, based on the evidence, that many people who exhibit dramatic reactions to bad news involving strangers are hypocrites.

Math doesn't respond well to opinion.

Remember, this thing is small. It's not like the wolfships. It'll ride over the waves, not crash through them. So we're safe as houses." He wasn't sure about the last two statements, but they seemed logical to him.

Just as well. I probably get seasick on boats. "You've never been on one." That's because I probably get seasick. She went to reply, then realized that she had no answer to this twisted logic, so she let him have the last word. Again.

Why not?" Then she thought further. "I wonder what Halt will say when we put it to him." Alyss shrugged. "Well, it's such a logical idea, he can hardly say no, can he?" "No!" said Halt. "No, no, no—and, just in case you missed it the first time, no.

Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat.

you think so logically...like a hawk soaring - I feel so chaotically...like a kite without a tail plummeting to earth...

The population of an inference is thus equivalent to the breadth or scope of an argument.

In 1913, Wittgenstein decided to live for two years in Norway on his own to meditate and work on logic. Russell tried to dissuade him.

All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.

Set the cart before the horse.

Never confuse faith, or belief—of any kind—with something even remotely intellectual.

An ounce of emotion is equal to a ton of facts.

LOGIC The principle governing human intellection. Its nature may be deduced from examining the following propositions, both of which are held by human beings to be true and often by the same people: I cant so you musnt, and I can but you musnt.

Experimentation must give way to argument, and argument must have recourse to experimentation

The facts have to be determined by empirical evidence, and our thinking has then to conform to the facts, not the facts to our thinking

There are some Men of one, some but of two Syllogisms, and no more; and others that can but advance one step farther.

In many cases it is not one series of consequences will serve the turn, but many different and opposite deductions must be examined and laid together, before a man can come to make a right judgment of the point in question. What then can be expected from men that neither see the want of any such kind of reasoning as this, nor, if they do, know they how to set about it, or could perform it?

Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.

Address"—Religion cut off from reason too easily becomes oppressive.

In fact, biology is chaos. Biological systems are the product not of logic but of evolution, an inelegant process. Life does not choose the logically best design to meet a new situation. It adapts what already exists...The result, unlike the clean straight lines of logic, is often irregular, messy.

biology is chaos. Biological systems are the product not of logic but of evolution, an inelegant process.

God is a logical, rational being, though he does not necessarily conform to the laws of any human system of logic. The laws of logic are an aspect of his own character. Being logical is his nature and his pleasure. So the fact that he cannot be illogical is not a weakness. It may not be fairly described as a lack of power. Indeed it is a mark of his great power that he always acts and thinks consistently, that he can never be pushed into the inconsistencies that plague human life.