Quotes About Logic

When people say clearly something that means there's a huge crack in their argument and they know things aren't clear at all.

Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent, said Miss Susan. But answers do.

In fact he was incurably insane and hallucinated more or less continuously, but by a remarkable stroke of lateral thinking his fellow wizards had reasoned that, in that case, the whole business could be sorted out if only they could find a formula that caused him to hallucinate that he was completely sane.* *This is a very common hallucination, shared by most people.

Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right. There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time.

When all else failed, she tried being reasonable.

Religion is not an exact science. Sometimes, of course, neither is science.

Several sellers of hot meat pies and sausages in a bun had appeared from nowhere and were doing a brisk trade. [Footnote: They always do, everywhere. No-one sees them arrive. The logical explaination is that the franchise includes the stall, the paper hat and a small gas-powered time machine.]

rational thoughts made out of insane components.

Apply logic in places where it wasn't intended to exist.

Science is not interested in what stands to reason.

logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers.

The thing about late-night cookery was that it made sense at the time. It always had some logic behind it. It just wasn't the kind of logic you'd use around midday.

Between every rational moment were a billion irrational ones.

Captain Vimes believed in logic, in much the same way as a man in a desert believed in ice -- i.e., it was something he really needed, but this just wasn't the world for it.

Well, I think, said Nobby, that when you rule out the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, ain't worth hanging around for on a cold night wonderin' about when you could be getting on the outside of a big drink.

Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers.

The anger rose up, joyfully. 'Yes! I'm me! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don't understand! When I hear people use the wrong words I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I think! And I always have a piece of string! That's the kind of person I am!

Human beings have always preferred common sense to logic.

He waited patiently until the uproar had died away. It was amazing, he thought, how people would argue against figures on no better basis than 'they must be wrong'.

You could trust numbers, except perhaps for pi, but he was working on that in his spare time and it was bound to give in sooner or later.

MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF.

Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right.

The Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage would have corrected this to 'she was not she', which would have caused the Professor of Logic to spit out his drink.

It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going around to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.