Quotes about logic (1454 quotes, page 15)

“The third reason capitalism gets blame here is that alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today's disaster. Capitalism often pursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Truth , Home , Wealth , People

“Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species is ethical; that it logically involved a readjustment of altruistic morals, by enlarging, as a necessity of rightness, the application of what has been called the 'Golden Rule' from the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom. Possibly Darwin himself did not quite perceive it. While man was deemed to be a creation apart from all other creations, a secondary or tertiary morality was considered good enough to practise towards the 'inferior' races; but no person who reasons nowadays can escape the trying conclusion that this is not maintainable. And though we may not at present see how the principle of equal justice all round is to be carried out in it entirety, I recognize that the League is grappling with the question.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Letter to the Humanitarian League (1910)

Justice , Question , Personality , People

“We have become blind to the alternatives to violence. This involves us in a sort of official madness, in which, while following what seems to be a perfect logic of self-defense and deterrence, we commit one absurdity after another: We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to "win the hearts and minds of the people" by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the "truth" of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. … I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Statement Against the War in Vietnam" an address at the University of Kentucky (10 February 1968) http://books.google.com/books?id=-hHNuLumg8wC&pg=PA68
The Long-Legged House (1969)

Peace , Imagination , Freedom , War

“The false logic involved is: “We exist; therefore something—call it X—created us.””

Arthur C. Clarke book Crusade

Once this assumption is made, the properties of the hypothetical X can be fantasied in an unlimited number of ways.
But the entire process is obviously fallacious; for by the same logic something must have created X—and so on. We are immediately involved in an infinite regress, which can have no meaning in the real universe.

Crusade, p. 878
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Falseness

“Jung believed there was a large pattern to life, that it wasn't just chaos. Our song Synchronicity II is about two parallel events that aren't connected logically or causally, but symbolically.”

Sting (1951) English musician

Life

“True love has be-guided me, O friend!
Reveal to me the land of my Beloved.
At my parents' I was an innocent maid.
With love to me He has robbed me of my heart.
Logic, semantics and a store of knowledge—
Such pedantry has left me devoid of Him.
Of what use are fasts and prayers to them,
Who have drunk deep from the front of love?
Sitting in the company of the Spouse,
Bullah is free from all rituals, O friend!”

Bulleh Shah (1680–1757) Punjabi poet

Bulleh Shah, The Love-Intoxicated Iconoclast, p. 129
Poetry

Heart , Knowledge , Parent , Love

“I cannot afford the luxury of sentiment, mine must be cold logic.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

Quoted from George Marshall: Defender of the Republic

“Transhumanism is the next logical step in the evolution of humankind, and it is the existential solution to the long-term survival of the human race.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

“The concept of logical thinking is selection and this is brought about by the processes of acceptance and rejection. Rejection is the basis of logical thinking.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

Source: Lateral Thinking : Creativity Step by Step (1970), p. 159

Thinking

“Unless the intensity of our defense of life matches the ferocity of the assault against it, we allow a greater violence to grow exponentially until an earth once teeming with life becomes a mass graveyard, a battered wasteland, and a toxic cesspool. Then, when it is finally too late, the unfortunates who remain will grasp what the radicals tried to convey: what the logic of growth and capitalism finally wrought, the colossal failure of human vision and will, and the complicity of pacifism with the greatest violence of all.”

Steven Best (1955) American activist

Source: The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (2014), Chapter 3 "The Paralysis of Pacifism: In Defense of Militant Direct Action" (p. 78)

Life , Failure

“However, efilism's claim that all life, human and non-human, should be ceased is a hubris I am not convinced humans have a right to exert. While the cessation of suffering humans cause is already manipulated in a way that could come under an efilist rubric, these 'management' tools usually come in the form of culling populations of nonhumans to redress an imagined environmental balance most usually caused by humans in the first place. Domestic efilism such a neutering rescue animals is necessary, especially when rescuing can involve the speciesism of feeding one slaughtered animal to sustain another, and neutering humans is the logical way to prevent the perpetuation of this practice as well”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, p. 153
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Imagination , Suffering , Animals , Way

“The various positivities produced ... by the logic of political hope depend on the mathematical illusion that negated negations might somehow escape, and not redouble, such negativity.”

Lee Edelman (1953) American academic

Source: No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004), p. 5

Hope , Mathematics , Dependency

“You talk of Paine with more respect than he deserves: He is utterly incapable of comprehending his subject. He has not even a moderate portion of learning of any kind. He has learnd the instrumental part of literature, a style, and a method of disposing his ideas, without having ever made a previous preparation of Study or thinking—for the use of it. ... [Paine] possesses nothing more than what a man whose audacity makes him careless of logical consequences, and his total want of honour and morality makes indifferent as to political consequences, may very easily write. They indeed who seriously write upon a principle of levelling ought to be answerd by the Magistrate—and not by the Speculatist.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to William Cusac Smith (22 July 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), pp. 303-304
1790s

Pain , Study , Indifference , Learning

“When I started to encounter Marxism at 16, the elementary truths of the surplus value theory and more than anything else, the logical argument that he produced that labour was the source of all wealth, gave me a political and intellectual justification for what I believed in a way that nothing else did.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Science
Source: Interview with Sam Aaronovitch for Marxism Today (June 1983) http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/83_06_06.pdf

Way , Truth , Wealth

“Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure — the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it — the humility of the intellect. The other great heritage is Christian ethics — the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual — the humility of the spirit.
These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent. But logic is not all; one needs one's heart to follow an idea. If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to? Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts God — more, one who disbelieves in God? Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts? So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other? Is this unavoidable? How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid? Is this not the central problem of our time?”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

remarks (2 May 1956) at a Caltech YMCA lunch forum http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm

God , Drawing , Religion , Time

“There are two possible ways to solving a dilemma, in justice or elsewhere; begin with the facts, and follow out their logic where it leads one, or begin with the desired outcome, and reason backward to the necessary steps to achieve it.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (2012), Chapter 24 (p. 527)

Way , Justice

“In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn't merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent. Race-mixing proves that races can mix - and in a lot of cases, want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 21
Born a Crime

Personality

“Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Problem

“Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.”

Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015) American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer

Wisdom

“I suggest that scientific knowledge, though logically more articulate and far more complex, is of this sort. The books and teachers from whom it is acquired present concrete examples together with a multitude of theoretical generalizations. Both are essential carriers of knowledge, and it is therefore Pickwickian to seek a methodological criterion that supposes the scientist can specify in advance whether each imaginable instance fits or would falsify his theory.”

Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) American historian, physicist and philosopher

"Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?", Criticism and the growth of knowledge edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (1970)

Imagination , Teachers , Books , Knowledge

“Here we are, in one little world, one planet... Everybody agrees that world government is the logical solution...”

Garry Davis (1921–2013) American actor turned peace activist (1921-2013)

As quoted in Garry Davis Cult, Life (Jan 24, 1949)

World

“Of course, people are more affected by actors or acting. But as a filmmaker, I need some logic. And this was my logic in making these two films, and how I connected these stories and these films together. People say my films don’t have any plot or storyline, but in my logic there is a storyline.”

Wong Kar-wai (1958) Hong Kong screenwriter, film producer and film director

"Wong Kar-wai by Han Ong" in Bomb Magazine (1 Janaury 1998) https://bombmagazine.org/articles/wong-kar-wai-1/

People

“The basic unit of writing practice is the timed exercise.
1. Keep your hand moving.
2. Don't cross out.
3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar.
4. Lose control.
5. Don't think. Don't get logical.
6. Go for the jugular.
[…] That is the discipline: to continue to sit.”

Natalie Goldberg book Writing Down the Bones

Essay, "First thoughts". p.8, 9
Writing Down the Bones (1986)

Time , Thinking , Exercises

“Although my mood swings were the logical and deterministic results of my inputs, they were dismayingly hard for me to foresee, let alone control.”

Rudy Rucker book Mathematicians in Love

Source: Mathematicians in Love (2006), Chapter 4, “Hypertunnel at the Tang Fat Hotel” (p. 151)

Mood

“People can be fooled into thinking of mathematics as logical, formal, symbolic reasoning. But this is far from reality...computers are far better at formal computation and formal reasoning, but humans are far better mathematicians.”

William Thurston (1946–2012) mathematician

Foreword to Teichmüller Theory

Fools , People , Thinking , Reality

“That’s what logic says. But I say, phooey, who wants logic? Not you, and not me. We want results.”

Charles Sheffield book Summertide

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 13, “Summertide Minus Ten” (p. 150)

“Always use the sharp knife of the philosophers to make sense at anything presented before you and come to the land of logic.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Sense

“If you get too emotional, you are ready to be defeated. No manifestation of emotions in the face of logic whenever it comes to the domain of philosophy.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Reason perceives the general and proceeds by logical operations, whereas Intellect perceives the principial − the metaphysical − and proceeds by intuition.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2006, Gnosis: Divine Wisdom, World Wisdom, 36, 978-1-933316-18-5]
Human being, Intellect

“There’s a certain step-by-step logic, inherent in human nature and the peculiarities of human psychology, which ensures that Man will always organize into the largest possible group. Civilization is inevitable, if you want a pat phrase.”

Algis Budrys (1931–2008) American writer

Source: Some Will Not Die (1961), Chapter 5 (p. 82)

Nature

“There were so many possible logical holes in that statement that Irene could have used it as a tea-strainer.”

Genevieve Cogman (1972) novelist and game designer

Source: The Burning Page (2016), Chapter 6 (pp. 64-65)

Tea

“Learn to talk honestly, truthfully, logically, ethically, and boldly.”

Salman Aziz (1993) Bangladeshi independent author and artist

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11053329-learn-to-talk-honestly-truthfully-logically-ethically-and-boldly

Learning

“Eminent scholars repeatedly make the logically contradictory claim that colonialism was both too disruptive and not disruptive enough.”

Bruce Gilley (1966) researcher

Source: The Case for Colonialism: A Response to My Critics, Page 5 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352039835_The_Case_for_Colonialism_A_Response_to_My_Critics The case for colonialism, Gilley, 2017

“Humanitarian aid by a country that is selling weapons to mercenaries, which they are using to strike a civilian peaceful population? I propose that Israel send that aid to the mercenaries and to the terrorists as the logical continuation of its activities.”

Nikol Pashinyan (1975) Prime Minister of Armenia

Source: In an interview with Jerusalem Post https://www.primeminister.am/en/interviews-and-press-conferences/item/2020/11/03/Nikol-Pashinyan-Interview-Jerusalem-Post/ (November 3, 2020)

Peace , Country

“Mystery is a word with no objective pertinence, merely describing the limitations of a mind. In fact, a mind may be classified by the order of the phenomena it considers mysterious.… The mystery is resolved, the solution made known. “Of course, it is obvious!” comes the chorus. A word about the obvious: it is always obvious.… The common mind transposed the sequence, letting the mystery generate the solution. This is logic in reverse; actually the mystery relates to the solution as the foam relates to the beer.…”

Jack Vance book The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph

The Unspeakable McInch (p. 39; all ellipses in the original)
Short fiction, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

Beer

“The real significance of the Russell paradox, from the standpoint of the modal-logic picture, is this: it shows that no concrete structure can be a standard model for the naive conception of the totality of all sets; for any concrete structure has a possible extension that contains more 'sets.'”

Hilary Putnam (1926–2016) American philosopher

"Mathematics without foundations"
Source: Philosophical Papers Volume 1: Mathematics, Matter, and Method (1975, 1979)
Context: (If we identify sets with the points that represent them in the various possible concrete structures, we might say: it is not possible for all possible sets to exist in any one world!) Yet set theory does not become impossible. Rather, set theory becomes the study of what must hold in, e.g. any standard model for Zermelo set theory.

“He's a computer. Perfect memory, rigid logic, no judgment. I forgot. I talked to him like a human being, and now—”

Larry Niven book A World Out of Time

Source: A World Out of Time (1976), Chapter 2 Don Juan, Section 4 (p. 59)

Perfection , Memory

“It is impossible for the same attribute at once to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same relation"; and we must add any further qualifications that may be necessary to meet logical objections. This is the most certain of principles, since it possesses the required definition; for it is impossible for anyone to suppose that the same thing is and is not, as some imagine that Heraclitus says.”

Aristotle book Metaphysics

Book IV, 1005
Metaphysics
Original: (el) τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ ἅμα ὑπάρχειν τε καὶ μὴ ὑπάρχειν ἀδύνατον τῷ αὐτῷ καὶ κατὰ τὸ αὐτό （καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα προσδιορισαίμεθ᾽ ἄν, ἔστω προσδιωρισμένα πρὸς τὰς λογικὰς δυσχερείας）: αὕτη δὴ πασῶν ἐστὶ βεβαιοτάτη τῶν ἀρχῶν: ἔχει γὰρ τὸν εἰρημένον διορισμόν. ἀδύνατον γὰρ ὁντινοῦν ταὐτὸν ὑπολαμβάνειν εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι, καθάπερ τινὲς οἴονται λέγειν Ἡράκλειτον.
Source: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0051%3Abook%3D4%3Asection%3D1005b

Imagination

“Your logic may be good,
But dialectics never saved a soul.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Savonarola (1881), Frà Domenico in Act II, sc. ix; p. 197.

Soul

“Because physical theories typically predict numerical values, an improvement in experimental precision reduces the tolerance range and hence increases corroborability. In most psychological research, improved power of a statistical design leads to a prior probability approaching ½ of finding a significant difference in the theoretically predicted direction. Hence the corroboration yielded by "success" is very weak, and becomes weaker with increased precision. "Statistical significance" plays a logical role in psychology precisely the reverse of its role in physics. This problem is worsened by certain unhealthy tendencies prevalent among psychologists, such as a premium placed on experimental "cuteness" and a free reliance upon ad hoc explanations to avoid refutation.”

Paul E. Meehl (1920–2003) American psychologist

Source: [Theory-testing in psychology and physics: A methodological paradox, Philosophy of Science, 34, 2, 1967, 103–115, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/288135]

Problem , Success

“Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do. Bells are the secret logic of school time; their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy the past and future, rendering every interval the same as any other, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 6

Mountain , Secret , World , School

“Doth logic in the lily hide,
And where's the reason in the rose?”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

The Door of Humility (1906)
Source: "Rome", XLI, line 11; p. 116.

“Animals who die for your dinner table die alone, in terror, in sadness and in pain. The killing is merciless and inhumane. … Animals suffer from pain and fear just as much as you do. Most spend their last hours locked in a truck, packed into a cage with hundreds of other terrified animals and then cruelly pushed into a blood soaked death chamber. Animals which are a year old are often far more rational – and capable of logical thought – than six-week-old babies. Pigs and sheep are far more intelligent than small children.”

Vernon Coleman (1946) British doctor

"Twenty One Reasons For Being A Vegetarian" (2007), in vernoncoleman.com http://www.vernoncoleman.com/twentyoner.htm.

Baby , Intelligence , Death , Pain

“An aphorism can be considered a logically completed thought, accepted from the point of view of its meaning for the expression of new sensations, knowledge and meanings.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Knowledge

“Logic is a way of going wrong systematically.”

Charles Kettering (1876–1958) American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 140 patents

As quoted in [Heinich, Robert, Robert Heinich, 1970, Technology and the Management of Instruction - Monograph 4, https://books.google.com/books?id=l_wnDwAAQBAJ, Information Age Publishing, 2000, Greenwich, Connecticut, 34, 9781607529736, 6 May 2020, [...] Kettering's comment, 'Logic is a way of going wrong systematically' [...].]

Way

“You will find, dear boy, on these chivalric adventures of yours, that manly courage and fortitude, even when bolstered by the fortunate possession of an enchanted sword such as Dastagerd, are not quite enough: one requires, as well, the use of logic, reason, deduction, and, in a word—intelligence!”

Lin Carter book Kesrick

Source: Kesrick (1982), Chapter 16, “The Fairy of the Fountain” (p. 105)

Intelligence , Boy , Courage

“The logic of the sanctions is arguably to starve the people and reduce the political consensus for the authorities and thereby overthrow the government. But as a Pastor, I see that people suffer from poverty and it doesn't seem to me that discussions about democracy are a priority for them.”

Joseph Tobji (1971) archeparch of Maronite Catholic Archeparchy of Aleppo

Archbishop Tobji of Aleppo after the presidential election: "Sanctions cause hunger and do not lead to more democracy" http://www.fides.org/en/news/70210-ASIA_SYRIA_Archbishop_Tobji_of_Aleppo_after_the_presidential_election_Sanctions_cause_hunger_and_do_not_lead_to_more_democracy (28 May 2021)

Democracy , People , Suffering