
“Logic cannot comprehend love; so much the worse for logic.”
Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
Original: La logica dell'amore, è non avere alcuna logica.
Source: prevale.net
“Logic cannot comprehend love; so much the worse for logic.”
Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
“All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically”
Source: Dreams of a Final Theory
Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there's a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe. And I believe in the poetic genius of a creator who would choose to express such unfathomable power as a child born in "straw poverty"; i. e., the story of Christ makes sense to me. … As an artist, I see the poetry of it. It's so brilliant. That this scale of creation, and the unfathomable universe, should describe itself in such vulnerability, as a child. That is mind-blowing to me. I guess that would make me a Christian. Although I don't use the label, because it is so very hard to live up to. I feel like I'm the worst example of it, so I just kinda keep my mouth shut. … I try to take time out of every day, in prayer and meditation. I feel as at home in a Catholic cathedral as in a revival tent. I also have enormous respect for my friends who are atheists, most of whom are, and the courage it takes not to believe.
“I love you, and beneath all that logic, calculation, and superstition, I know you love me too.”
Source: The Indigo Spell
“There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics.”
The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton (1959)
Context: There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics. The former is supple and lifelike, it follows our experience. The latter is abstract and rigid, more ideal. The latter is perfectly necessary, perfectly reliable: the former is only sometimes reliable and hardly ever systematic. But the logic of mathematics achieves necessity at the expense of living truth, it is less real than the other, although more certain. It achieves certainty by a flight from the concrete into abstraction. Doubtless, to an idealist, this would seem to be a more perfect reality. I am not an idealist. The logic of the poet — that is, the logic of language or the experience itself — develops the way a living organism grows: it spreads out towards what it loves, and is heliotropic, like a plant.