Best 923 quotes in «logic quotes» category

Sometimes the endpoint is the startpoint

sometimes the most logical thought that come out from our head is far from "logic" in reality.

So... wait. You're saying that on the other side―where I obviously believed in the other side―I realized that if I Returned I wouldn't believe in the other side, so I came back with the purpose of discovering faith in the other side, which I only lost because I Returned in the first place?" Llarimar paused. Then he smiled. "That last one breaks down a little bit in the face of logic, doesn't it?

Spinoza formulated the profoundly important principle that *all determination is negation*. To determine a thing is to cut it off from some sphere of being and so to limit it. To define is to set boundaries. To say that a thing is green limits it by cutting it from the sphere of pink, blue, or other-coloured things. To say that it is good cuts it off from the sphere of evil. This limitation is the same as negation. To *affirm* that a thing is within certain limits is to *deny* that it is outside those limits. To say that it is green is to say that it is not pink. Affirmation involves negation. Whatever is said of a thing denies something else of it. All determination is negation. This principle is fundamental for Hegel also, but with him it takes rather the converse form that *all negation is determination*. Formal logicians will remind us that we cannot simply convert Spinoza's proposition. But it is sufficient to point out in reply that not only does affirmation involve negation; negation likewise involves affirmation. To say that a thing belongs to one class is to affirm that it belongs to some other class,—though we may not know what that class is. Positive and negative are correlatives which mutually involve each other. To posit is to negate: this is Spinoza's principle. To negate is to posit: this is Hegel's. When, therefore, we meet Hegel talking about "the portentous power of the negative," we have to consider that for him negation is the very process of creation. For the *positive* nature of an object consists in its determinations. The nature of a stone is to be white, heavy, hard, etc. And since all determinations are negations, it follows that the positive nature of a thing consists in its negations. Negation, therefore, is of the very essence of positive being. And for the world to come into being what is above all necessary is the force of negation, "the portentous power of the negative." The genus only becomes the species by means of the differentia, and the differentia is precisely that which carves out a particular class from the general class by excluding, i.e., negating, the other species. And the species again only becomes the individual in the same way, by negating other individuals. These thoughts are no causal reflections of Hegel. They underlie his entire system. We must get to understand that these three ideas, determination, limitation, and negation, all involve each other." —from_The Philosophy of Hegel_

States that are built on a religious foundation limit their own people in a circle of faith and fear.

Suppose that members of a religious movement, such as Christianity, maintain that the existence of some powerful god and its goals or laws can be known through their scriptures, their prophets, or some special revelation. Suppose further that the evidence that is available to support the reliability of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations is weaker than that God is hypothetically capable of producing. That is, suppose that Christians maintain that Jesus was resurrected on the basis of the Gospels, or that God’s existence can be known through the Bible, or Muslims insist on the historical authenticity of the Koran. Could God, the almighty creator of the universe, have brought it about so that the evidence in favor of the resurrection, the Bible, or the Koran was better than we currently find it? I take it that the answer is obviously yes. Even if you think there is evidence that is sufficient to prove the resurrection, a reasonable person must also acknowledge that it could have been better. And there’s the problem. If the capacity of that god is greater than the effectiveness or quality of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations, then the story they are telling contradicts itself. 'We know our god is real on the basis of evidence that is inadequate for our god.' Or, 'The grounds that lead us to believe in our god are inconsistent with the god we accept; nevertheless, we believe in this god that would have given us greater evidence if it had wished for us to believe in it.' Given the disparity between the gods that these religious movements portend and the grounds offered to justify them, the atheist is warranted in dismissing such claims. If the sort of divine being that they promote were real and if he had sought our believe on the basis of the evidence, the evidential situation would not resemble the one we are in. The story doesn’t make internal sense. A far better explanation is that their enthusiasm for believing in a god has led them to overstate what the evidence shows. And that same enthusiasm has made it difficult for them to see that an all powerful God would have the power to make his existence utterly obvious and undeniable. Since it’s not, the non-believer can’t possibly be faulted for failing to believe.

The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there, And warmly debated the matter; The Orthodox said that it came from the air, And the Heretics said from the platter. They argued it long and they argued it strong, And I hear they are arguing now; But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese, Not one of them thought of a cow.

That which does not come by logic, does not leave by logic.

The alliance of character and rationality is a serious question. The alliance involves both agents. The character is needed because logic will give you the structure, but will never tell you what should be inserted in it. The character is necessary because logic will tell you what is missing, but will not add anything new. The character is needed because logic will show you the optimal process of making things done without ever introducing how to make things done better. Logic will criticise everything, but never create anything. Logic alone is the tool to judge, plan or think, but it is invisible. Logic cares about your sentiments as the fork cares about your taste.

The artist begins where logic ends.

The best minds have their soft spots and sometimes feel somewhat bruised by the scant respect of logic.

The bubble logic driving tulipomania has since acquired a name: “the greater fool theory.” Although by any conventional measure it is folly to pay thousands for a tulip bulb (or for that matter an Internet stock), as long as there is an even greater fool out there willing to pay even more, doing so is the most logical thing in the world.

The consequence model, the logical one, the amoral one, the one which refuses any divine intervention, is a problem really for just the (hypothetical) logician. You see, towards God I would rather be grateful for Heaven (which I do not deserve) than angry about Hell (which I do deserve). By this the logician within must choose either atheism or theism, but he cannot possibly through good reason choose anti-theism. For his friend in this case is not at all mathematical law: the law in that 'this equation, this path will consequently direct me to a specific point'; over the alternative and the one he denies, 'God will send me wherever and do it strictly for his own sovereign amusement.' The consequence model, the former, seeks the absence of God, which orders he cannot save one from one's inevitable consequences; hence the angry anti-theist within, 'the logical one', the one who wants to be master of his own fate, can only contradict himself - I do not think it wise to be angry at math.

The danger of exchanging the necessary insecurity of philosophical thought for the total explanation of an ideology and its [worldview], is not even so much the risk of falling for some usually vulgar, always uncritical assumption as of exchanging the freedom inherent in man's capacity to think for the straight-jacket of logic with which man can force himself almost as violently as he is forced by some outside power.

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination. Art is the aesthetic ordering of experience to express meanings in symbolic terms, and the reordering of nature--the qualities of space and time--in new perceptual and material form. Art is an end in itself; its values are intrinsic. Technology is the instrumental ordering of human experience within a logic of efficient means, and the direction of nature to use its powers for material gain. But art and technology are not separate realms walled off from each other. Art employs techne, but for its own ends. Techne, too, is a form of art that bridges culture and social structure, and in the process reshapes both.

That was basic hound logic, learned from Faffy: if you ran, you were prey.

The amount of understanding produced by a theory is determined by how well it meets the criteria of adequacy–testability, fruitfulness, scope, simplicity, conservatism–because these criteria indicate the extent to which a theory systematizes and unifies our knowledge.

The disruption of science is one which abandons the method and seeks to conquer grounds outside its territory. It is not at all religion but this pseudo-science that is the enemy of science.

The expression e=mc2 is the ultimate statement in bounce per ounce.

The English language is simply not logical. It is strong, free, and beautiful.

The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.

The greatest of fools are those who fail to mark the invisible from the nonexistent.

The goal of argumentation is to make a case so forceful (note the metaphor) that skeptics are coerced into believing it—they are powerless to deny it while still claiming to be rational. In principle, it is the ideas themselves that are, as we say, compelling, but their champions are not always averse to helping the ideas along with tactics of verbal dominance, among them intimidation (“Clearly . . .”), threat (“It would be unscientific to . . .”), authority (“As Popper showed . . .”), insult (“This work lacks the necessary rigor for . . .”), and belittling (“Few people today seriously believe that . . .”). Perhaps this is why H. L. Mencken wrote that “college football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students.

The great fault of logic is that it seems so reasonable, even when it is not.

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation, which holds between language and the world. To all of them the logical structure is common. (Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story. They are all in a certain sense one.)

The inconsistencies that haunt our relationships with animals also result from the quirks of human cognition. We like to think of ourselves as the rational species. But research in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics shows that our thinking and behavior are often completely illogical. In one study, for example, groups of people were independently asked how much they would give to prevent waterfowl from being killed in polluted oil ponds. On average, the subjects said they would pay $80 to save 2,000 birds, $78 to save 20,000 birds, and $88 to save 200,000 birds. Sometimes animals act more logically than people do; a recent study found that when picking a new home, the decisions of ant colonies were more rational than those of human house-hunters. What is it about human psychology that makes it so difficult for us to think consistently about animals? The paradoxes that plague our interactions with other species are due to the fact that much of our thinking is a mire of instinct, learning, language, culture, intuition, and our reliance on mental shortcuts.

The light obtained by setting straw men on fire is not what we mean by illumination.

Their love story: It’s when logic fell in love with paranoia and paranoia learned to love logic; logic grounded paranoia and paranoia turned up the heat because logic never knew where that heat would come from. Logic needs to be stimulated and paranoia needs to be soothed and therefore they need each other, which resulted in the birth of combustion. The end.

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior--benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control. 'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.' 'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed. 'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course--as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness.

The logical feebleness of science is not sufficiently borne in mind. It keeps down the weed of superstition, not by logic but by slowly rendering the mental soil unfit for its cultivation.

The logic of the world applies in everyone's case except our own. How we love giving ourselves margin!

The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth.

The media and intelligentsia were partly complicit in Trump's depiction of the world as a dystopia headed for even greater disaster. 'Charge the cockpit or you die!' cried the pro-Trump intellectual right. 'I'd rather see the empire burn to the ground under Trump, opening up at least the possibility of radical change, than cruise on autopilot under Clinton,' said the pro-Trump left. When people believe that the world is heading off a cliff, they are receptive to the perennial appeal of demagogues: 'What do you have to lose?' But if the media and intellectuals put events into statistical and historical context, rather than constantly crying 'crisis,' they would make it clearer what the answer to that question is. Revolutionary regimes from Nazi Germany and Maoist China to contemporary Venezuela show that people have a tremendous amount to lose when a charismatic leader forces a radical personal vision on a society. A modern liberal democracy is a precious achievement. Until the messiah comes, it will always have problems, but it's better to solve problems than to start a conflagration and hope for the best.

The mindset is like an individual program having its logic.

The New Man means to develop all the three dimensions of being, all the three doors to God: the head, the dimension of thinking, logic and reason, the heart - the dimension of joy, trust, intuition, relationships, beauty, creativity and a sense of unity in love and the being, the dimension of meditation, silence, emptiness and oneness with life. The first level of the head is the dimension of ideas, intellect, hypothesis, theories, logic, analysis, rationality and dualistic thinking. The first level is the level of the mind, which means a continuous oscillation like a pendulum between the mind's memories of the past and the ideas, dreams and expectations of the future. The second level of the heart is the dimension of joy, acceptance, trust, understanding, trust, friendship, intuition, empathy, creativity, compassion, humor, playfulness and a sense of unity in love. The third level of being is the dimension of presence, awareness, meditation, silence, emptiness and wholeness. The third level is our connection with our inner life source.

Then focus on thruth, not logic. Stop trying to figure out why and look for what is.

The moment my niece came into the world, I realized that logic can't make sense of someone who's so brand new to you.

The most flattering spin I can put on this phase of paradoxes and metaphysical tangles is that I was smart enough, at age fourteen, to destroy any fledgling hypothesis I came up with. A tentative explanation, theory, or formulation would pop up in my brain only to be attacked by what amounted to a kind of logical immune system, bent on eliminating all that was weak or defective. Which is to say that my mind had become a scene of furious predation, littered with the half-eaten corpses of vast theories and brilliant syntheses.

The New Man is the most important things that is happening in the world today. The new man will have to find new forms of communication, working together and sharing, because the old man and the old society will not disappear immediately. The old man will also put up a fight. The new man is a new humanity. Up to now, man has lived a pathological life, a neurotic life, a destructive life. During modern times, during the last 3000 years, there have been 6000 wars. You can not call this humanity healthy. Once in a while a Buddha, a Jesus, a Socrates, appeared, but each person is born to be a Buddha. How can I become the new man? The new man means a new consciousness, a new being. Humanity can not be saved if the new man does not arrive. Before it was not a necessity, but now it is absolutely necessary because now the war technology can destroy the whole earth. if not the new man arrives, if not people become more aware, awake and conscious, then this earth will not survive. The New Man means to develop all the three dimensions of being, all the three doors to God: the head, the dimension of thinking, logic and reason, the heart, the dimension of joy, trust, intuition, relationships, beauty, creativity and a sense of unity in love and the being, the dimension of meditation, silence, emptiness and oneness with life. The first level of the head is the dimension of ideas, intellect, hypothesis, theories, logic, analysis, rationality and dualistic thinking. The first level is the level of the mind, which means a continuous oscillation like a pendulum between the mind's memories of the past and the ideas, dreams and expectations of the future. The second level of the heart is the dimension of joy, acceptance, trust, understanding, trust, friendship, relationships, intuition, empathy, creativity, compassion, humor, playfulness and a sense of unity in love. The third level of being is the dimension of presence, awareness, meditation, silence, emptiness and wholeness. The third level is our connection with our inner life source. The new man means awareness, consciousness, love and creativity. The new man means meditation, to be in contact with our own inner source of silence. And if more people become meditative, the earth becomes filled with the fragrance of the new man.

The nobles had made reading unpopular, as it showed that one couldn’t afford to buy spells or magical devices, since one had to get knowledge to do things the ordinary way; even if this view held little logic, the king himself was known to insult readers as “bookfaces” or “unable to think for themselves, so they need to spout what others have said,” and these opinions became popular, as did most views expressed by the king or his son.

Theologians, and religionists in general, start with a fantasy premise and then proceed to apply rigorous formal logic to tease out its implications. Stark himself points out that “theology consists of formal reasoning about God.” This is admirably exact. Theologians, beginning with a wished-for creation of their own minds, analyze that creation’s characteristics by rigorous application of the principles of formal—that is, deductive—logic.

The person who wishes to attain human perfection should study logic first, next mathematics, then physics, and, lastly, metaphysics.

The ordinary was the divine, where common sense met mystery, where logic kissed the cheek of the inexplicable, the immeasurable, immemorial spirit throbbing like veins beneath the hard gray asphalt of quotidian life.

The pessimist reason that things just happen, where the optimist believe that things happen for a reason.

The philosophers make still another objection: "What you gain in rigour," they say, "you lose in objectivity. You can rise toward your logical ideal only by cutting the bonds which attach you to reality. Your science is infallible, but it can only remain so by imprisoning itself in an ivory tower and renouncing all relation with the external world. From this seclusion it must go out when it would attempt the slightest application.

The only reason I'm writing this down is to show how human reason, even very sharp and exact human reason, can get crazily confused and thrown off the track.

the princess will love me so much despite her father that he, knowing full well that I am the son of a water-carrier, will accept me as her lord and husband; if he does not, this is where abducting her and taking her wherever I choose comes in, for either time or death will put an end to her parents' anger.

There are certain rules of logic that science has to adhere to, and there are good reasons for that; faith by contrast ignores all of that outright, preferring to believe whatever makes one happy. I want people to understand that accuracy and accountability actually matter, not just in academics but also as a point of integrity and honor and as a general rule in life.

The principle we are examining may be called the principle of induction, and its two parts may be stated as follows: (a) When a thing of a certain sort A has been found to be associated with a thing of a certain other sort B, and has never been found dissociated from a thing of the sort B, the greater the number of cases in which A and B have been associated, the greater is the probability that they will be associated in a fresh case in which one of them is known to be present; (b) Under the same circumstances, a sufficient number of cases of association will make the probability of a fresh association nearly a certainty, and will make it approach certainty without limit.

There is enough knowledge in the books to explain the existing, your knowledge must inspire what is possible.