Best 923 quotes in «logic quotes» category

Applying logic to potentially illogical behaviour is to construct a house on shifting foundations. The structure will inevitably collapse.

a priori knowledge such as mathematics or logic is general, whereas all experience is particular.

Are [the arts and the sciences] really as distinct as we seem to assume? [...] Most universities will have distinct faculties of arts and sciences, for instance. But the division clearly has some artificiality. Suppose one assumed, for example, that the arts were about creativity while the sciences were about a rigorous application of technique and methods. This would be an oversimplification because all disciplines need both. The best science requires creative thinking. Someone has to see a problem, form a hypothesis about a solution, and then figure out how to test that hypothesis and implement its findings. That all requires creative thinking, which is often called innovation. The very best scientists display creative genius equal to any artist. [...] And let us also consider our artists. Creativity alone fails to deliver us anything of worth. A musician or painter must also learn a technique, sometimes as rigorous and precise as found in any science, in order that they can turn their thoughts into a work. They must attain mastery over their medium. Even a writer works within the rules of grammar to produce beauty. [...] The logical positivists, who were reconstructing David Hume’s general approach, looked at verifiability as the mark of science. But most of science cannot be verified. It mainly consists of theories that we retain as long as they work but which are often rejected. Science is theoretical rather than proven. Having seen this, Karl Popper proposed falsifiability as the criterion of science. While we cannot prove theories true, he argued, we can at least prove that some are false and this is what demonstrates the superiority of science. The rest is nonsense on his account. The same problems afflict Popper’s account, however. It is just as hard to prove a theory false as it is to prove one true. I am also in sympathy with the early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus who says that far from being nonsense, the non-sciences are often the most meaningful things in our lives. I am not sure the relationship to truth is really what divides the arts and sciences. [...] The sciences get us what we want. They have plenty of extrinsic value. Medicine enables us to cure illness, for instance, and physics enables us to develop technology. I do not think, in contrast, that we pursue the arts for what they get us. They are usually ends in themselves. But I said this was only a vague distinction. Our greatest scientists are not merely looking to fix practical problems. Newton, Einstein and Darwin seemed primarily to be seeking understanding of the world for its own sake, motivated primarily by a sense of wonder. I would take this again as indicative of the arts and sciences not being as far apart as they are usually depicted. And nor do I see them as being opposed. The best in any field will have a mixture of creativity and discipline and to that extent the arts and sciences are complimentary.

Are we not all one flesh? One mind? A sword brings power. Knowledge brings coin. With either, one can make blood reckoned, can earn names. The only thing that differs between a noble man and a working man is that they have now, while the other does not have it yet. Such things can be taken. They are always taken.

Aristotle was convinced that a trained memory helped the development of logical thought processes.

As a matter of fact, with all his wit, humor, raillery, persiflage, he was the profoundest logician that ever appealed to the intellect of an American audience. There was logic even in his laughter. He passed the cup of mirth, and in its sparkling foam were found the gems of unanswerable truth. {Kittredge on the great Robert Ingersoll}

As a system of hybrid communicating vessels, the human interior consists of paradoxical or autogenous hollow bodies that are at once tight and leaky, that must alternate between the roles of container and content, and which simultaneously have properties of inner and outer walls.

A sense of logic causes an understanding to true sensitivity in a sensational sense, amuse the realm of celestial essence. Pleasantly speaking, it brings pleasure to see a fleshly man become a supreme god in He.

As the dew drop slides down the leaf to wet the soil, they call it "fall in love". Yet, do we know the way up from the way down?

As the sensations of motion and discreteness led to the abstract notions of the calculus, so may sensory experience continue thus to suggest problem for the mathematician, and so may she in turn be free to reduce these to the basic formal logical relationships involved. Thus only may be fully appreciated the twofold aspect of mathematics: as the language of a descriptive interpretation of the relationships discovered in natural phenomena, and as a syllogistic elaboration of arbitrary premise.

A theist can't empirically prove that God exists but he believes in God because no one can allegedly disprove God's existence. By his logic, you must believe in anything you can't disprove. That means all things are real until disproved--including the tooth fairy, the Loch Ness Monster, Santa Claus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.

...atheism leaves no room for excuses...

Baby rats need rat milk, baby cats need cat milk, baby dogs need dog milk, baby humans need human milk, baby cows need cow milk, baby chimps need chimp milk.. Would anyone believe it if someone claimed adult giraffes need elephant milk? or adult horses need squirrel milk? or adult possums need goat milk? or adult humans need cow milk? oh, wait, no, that last one makes total sense.. NOT

At the time I thought the winner in an argument was the person who put forward the most logical support for his position. Of course, this isn't true. Human history, from gardening disputes to genocide, is full of examples of people with the most decent, well-argued stance ending up with their face in the mud in front of a naked display of power.

Banyaknya proletar mesin dan tanah di Indonesia dan kekuatan yang tersembunyi memang sudah cukup kuat buat merebut kekuasaan dari imperialisme Belanda. Tetapi didikannya masih sangat tipis dan tidak cocok dengan keperluan dan kewajiban klasnya di hari depan. Mereka kekurangan filsafat. Mereka masih tebal diselimuti ilmu buat akhirat dan tahyul campur aduk.

Being ninety nine percent sure opens for a possibility that you might be a hundred percent wrong.

Before we begin to investigate that, let us try to realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the essential from the accidental.

Before we discuss intuition in greater detail, let us first dispel the myths that intuition is some kind of a ‘fluke’ of nature. I would like you to understand that intuition is a skill that can be developed just as any other skills that you acquire. It comes from you, from no one else! Because we have not experienced that zone, that part, that dimension of our being, we have forgotten it. - HDH Bhagawan Sri Nithyananda Paramashivoham, in the book "Living Enlightenment".

Behind your reaction is a feeling that whatever is 'true' must be able to be expressed logically. Men, in particular, have a tendency to confuse correct logic with an accurate assessment of a situation. Be careful of any situation that you have to reason through logically, because if you have to work to reason it out, you're probably missing something.

Being and not being are not two different realities, but two different aspects of the same reality.

Becoming a part of a movement doesn't help anybody think clearly.

Being' cannot be derived from higher concepts by definition, nor can it be presented through lower ones. But does this imply being no longer offers a problem? Not at all. We can infer only that 'Being' cannot have the character of an entity. Thus we cannot apply to Being the concept of 'definition' as presented in traditional logic, [...] which, within certain limits, provides a justifiable way of characterizing 'entities'.

Being ninty nine percent sure opens for a possibility that you might be a hundred percent wrong.

Beware of resting on logic.

Beware of logic.

But if they are shown to be, and are the works not of men but of God, why are the unbelievers so irreligious as not to recognize the Master Who did them?

But in the end, black can never be white, one plus one must always equal two, and Mara Lynn was a normal little girl.

But, after all, why not? And if so--why, if so, that would explain everything.

But...that doesn't make any sense...!' 'It does if you're a goat.

Chana knows, I wondered sometimes how I raised that child without strangling her. By age six, [Jasnah] was pointing out my logical fallacies as I tried to get her to go to bed on time.

But the world doesn't run on logic, it runs on the seven deadly sins and the weather. - Alan Furst; Red Gold

Causes of individuals presuppose causes of the species, which are not univocal yet not wholly equivocal either, since they are expressing themselves in their effects. We could call them analogical. In language too all universal terms presuppose the non-univocal analogical use of the term *being*.

Certain levels of human understanding cannot be attained, it is claimed, until the brain can work in more than one way.

Chaos is not the lack of order, it is merely the absence of order, that the observer is used to.

By sabotaging logic, the common frame of reference, and the common language, we have removed a "safety valve" that allows cultural divides to be resolved.

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.

Causality is a pointless superstition. These days it would take more than one book to persuade anyone of that.

Comparison is the most abused intellectual tool of all. We compare men and women, man and God, good and bad, equal and unequal, forgetting that this sin only results in a punishment so severe that we can't even trace it back to its origins. All we're left with in the end is ambiguity, uncertainty, lethargy and and Kafka!

Contradictions do not perplex the logician. They arise because there are more rules to an open game than can be known.

Complicated things are only a group of simple ones

Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.

Confusion is not the absence of thinking it’s the absence of logic, All the options must be taken into account. If the logic does not fit into the thinking, just think again logically.

Consideration doth, as it were, open the door between the head and the heart: the understanding having received truths, lays them up in the memory now, consideration is the conveyer of theme from thence to the affections (571).

... Desire baffles knowledge and power.

Data Science takes the guesswork/emotions out of answering business questions by applying logic and mathematics to find better solutions.

De Bono argues that the West's tradition of settling disagreement by debate or argument is an example of overreliance on logic.

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza Intellectual: One who knows no craft.

Desperate, lonely, cut off from the human community which in many cases has ceased to exist, under the sentence of violent death, wracked by desires for intimacy they do not know how to fulfil, at the same time tormented by the presence of women, men turn to logic.

¿Cuántas veces le he dicho que si eliminamos lo imposible, lo que queda, por improbable que parezca , tiene que ser la verdad? (cap. 6).

Cursed luck! —said he, biting his lip as he shut the door, —for man to be master of one of the finest chains of reasoning in nature, —and have a wife at the same time with such a head-piece, that he cannot hang up a single inference within side of it, to save his soul from destruction.