Quotes about logic
page 3

“If you live today, you breath in nihilism… it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Fight

“Classifying thoughts, feelings and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying whale as fish.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Disease, Behavior, Error, Feeling

“Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Source: The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982

Life, Truth

“Time talks behind our back. To our face it's friendly and logical, never hesitating to give more of itself. But when we're not looking, it steals our lives and says bad things about us to the parts of us it's stolen”

Jonathan Carroll book A Child Across the Sky

Source: A Child Across the Sky

Time, Parting

“But that's men all over… Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Busman's Honeymoon

Source: Busman's Honeymoon

Men, Help

“If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Sudden Death (1983)
Variant: "If the World Made Sense, Men Would Ride Sidesaddle" was the title of a 1993 one-man comedy by Ed Navis, performed at Wings Theatre, New York.
Variant: If the world were a logical place, then men would ride side-saddle.

For Men, Men, World

“It was the most convulted, ridiculous piece of logic I'd heard in awhile… It was something I would have come up with.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won’t? - Damon”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Nightfall

People

“We seem to inhabit a universe made up of a small number of elements-particles-bits that swirl in chaotic clouds, occasionally clustering together in geometrically logical temporary configurations.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Source: Chaos & Cyber Culture

Universe

“It wasn't sarcasm." Graves blew out a cloud of acrid smoke. "It was pointing out a fallacy in your logic, babe."
Anna's jaw actually dropped. For a moment, I wasn't sure if I should laugh or push him out of the room. Way to go, Graves.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Jealousy

Way

“I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing…. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

People, Success, Personality

“Does fuzzy logic tickle?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“I know three things will never be believed - the true, the probable, and the logical”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

“Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

People

“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

As quoted in Can A Smart Person Believe in God? (2004) by Michael Guillen, Ch. 7 : Hope Springs Eternal, p. 90

God, Question

“Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom. This is Zen. This is my motorcycle maintenance.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Wisdom

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Variant: When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

People, Motivation

“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

As quoted in "Literary Censorship in England" in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5 (November 1913), p. 378; this has sometimes appeared on the internet in paraphrased form as "Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads"
1910s
Context: Any public committee man who tries to pack the moral cards in the interest of his own notions is guilty of corruption and impertinence. The business of a public library is not to supply the public with the books the committee thinks good for the public, but to supply the public with the books the public wants. … Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read. But as the ratepayer is mostly a coward and a fool in these difficult matters, and the committee is quite sure that it can succeed where the Roman Catholic Church has made its index expurgatorius the laughing-stock of the world, censorship will rage until it reduces itself to absurdity; and even then the best books will be in danger still.

Books, Reading

“I want to rip off your logic
and make passionate sense to you.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Sense, Passion

“Women don't have a sense of humor. They don't need one. The Almighty made them as a permanent joke on men. From which one may logically deduce tha the Almighty is a female.”

Loretta Chase book Lord of Scoundrels

Source: Lord of Scoundrels

Women, Men, Sense

“It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.”

Amy Tan The Hundred Secret Senses

Source: The Hundred Secret Senses

Hope

“A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void…”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer (1984)
Context: A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void… The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.

Dreams, Hope, Sleep, Speed

“Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

Source: The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

“Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Of Studies
Essays (1625)
Source: The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon

Men, History, Mathematics, Nature

“In life two negatives don't make a positive. Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In life things just get worse and worse and worse.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Life

“Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Glory Road

Glory Road (1963)
Context: Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.

Way

“He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Knowledge

“I had learned this lesson so many times
before. It was the great inner truth that
didn't require the support of logic. Every
time I loved, I lost, and I was diminished.
I wondered how much of me would be left
after tomorrow.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Love, Truth, Support, Learning

“I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Life, Past

“Truth is without flourishes or manners and runs with a logic all its own.”

Patricia Briggs book Bone Crossed

Source: Bone Crossed

Truth

“Not everything people did could be in a correct, logical order, especially when they were alone.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

People

“Logic is relative.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? – William Lane Craig vs. Sam Harris http://www.reasonablefaith.org/is-the-foundation-of-morality-natural-or-supernatural-the-craig-harris, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States – April 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk7jHJRSzhM&t=1m10s <br class="br">2010s

“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Past Through Tomorrow

“If This Goes On—” Chapter 10, p. 426
The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)
Source: Revolt in 2100/Methuselah's Children
Context: “Do you seriously expect to start a rebellion with picayune stuff like that?”
“It’s not picayune stuff, because it acts directly on their emotions, below the logical level. You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic. It doesn’t have to be a prejudice about an important matter either.

Men

“I've made the most important discovery of my life. It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logic or reasons can be found.”

Sylvia Nasar book A Beautiful Mind

Source: A Beautiful Mind

Love, Life

“People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

People, Music, Freedom

“You are attempting to be logical, I suspect, and logic has little to do with government, and nothing at all to do with military administration.”

Robin McKinley book The Blue Sword

Source: The Blue Sword

“Lust has less logic than love, sometimes, but it's easier to fight.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Killing Dance

Source: The Killing Dance

Love, Fight

“To touch him in ways he'd never been touched before, this person who, beyond all logic, was the other half of her. Who belonged to her. Who was her soulmate.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 3

Way, Personality

“It seemed to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

World

“There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Science

“Because to me, there is no logic of any kind behind misogyny. Therefore, it’s funny, because it’s so completely random to me. It’s senseless.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

“Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Thinking

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Life, Thinking, Time

“How do you feel right now?"
"I hurt like hell."
"You'll feel worse tomorrow."
"So?"
"So, better get a jump on this while you still feel… not as bad."
"What kind of logic is that?" I retorted.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

Feeling, Hell, Hurt

“Logic is like the sword--those who appeal to it shall perish by it.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

“Then stop trying to throw logic at nightmares. Sometimes the monsters are real, Anita. Sometimes they're real and the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster. ~Bibiana to Anita”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Variant: Sometimes the monsters are real, Anita. Sometimes they’re real and the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster.'
- Chang Bibi to Anita
Source: Bullet

Way

“I love you, and beneath all that logic, calculation, and superstition, I know you love me too.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Love

“Sleep seems to hammer out for me the logical conclusions of my vague days, and offer them to me as dreams.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Dreams, Sleep

“We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Faith

“Logical thinking keeps you from wasting time worrying, or hoping. It prevents disappointment. Imagination, on the other hand, only gets you hyped up over things that will never realistically happen.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

Hope, Disappointment, Imagination, Thinking

“When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against Nature must lead to their own downfall.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

People, Nature

“But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Problem

“Mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Soul

“Remember in elementary school you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file from smallest to tallest? What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

People, School

“After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.”

Richard Russo Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

People, World, Time, Heart

“His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

“But still," Ayumi said, "it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness."
"You may be right," Aomame said, "But it's too late to trade it in for another one.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

World

“… some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Michael Caine movie The Dark Knight

Movie The Dark Knight, character Alfred Pennyworth

World, Money, Men

“Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Some Mistakes of Moses

Personality

“For once, you're going to hear something that doesn't fit into your neat, compartmentalized world of order and logic and reason.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

World

“The heart knows no logic, and rarely corresponds with the brain.”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Everlasting

Heart

“Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Art, Freedom

“The inclination to believe in the fantastic may strike some as a failure in logic, or gullibility, but it’s really a gift. A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not.”

Chris Van Allsburg (1949) US children's writer and illustrator

World, Failure

“There's nothing more annoying than cold logic and reason when you've got a good fit going.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“There is a simple, logical explanation,' I said to myself. And because you never know who else is listening, I added, 'And there is nothing under the bed.'" --Dexter”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. The universe is telling you something.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Universe

“It’s Adrian Ivashkov logic. Don’t try to understand it. Just roll with it.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Understanding

“People want to ignore what they can't understand. They're looking for logic at any cost.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

People, Understanding

“Emotions are the curse of logic.”

Frank Herbert book The Green Brain

Source: The Green Brain

“Logic cannot comprehend love; so much the worse for logic.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Love

“you can’t use logic on human behavior.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Behavior

“You're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

World, Sense, Waiting

“Remember, this thing is small. It's not like the wolfships. It'll ride over the waves, not crash through them. So we're safe as houses."
He wasn't sure about the last two statements, but they seemed logical to him.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Icebound Land

Housing

“Love is many things none of them logical.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Love

“In the battle between logic and crazy, crazy always wins.”

Jenna Black (1965) American writer

Source: Shadowspell

“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial (1920), Ch. 10
Context: Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, just as the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it twice.

“Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Life, Hope, Knowledge

“Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House

Fear, Fight

“I want to rip off your logic and make passionate sense to you. I want to ride in the swing of your hips. My fingers will dig in you like quotation marks, blazing your limbs into parts of speech.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Sense, Passion, Parting

“The human mind is not a terribly logical or consistent place.”

Jim Butcher Turn Coat

Source: Turn Coat

“I know when something is too important to be decided by logic.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Mine Till Midnight

“In the political domain, deprived of any collective politcal landmark, stripped of any notion of the 'meaning of History; and no longer able to hope for or expect a social revolution, many intellectuals, along with much of public opinion, have been won over to the logic of a capitalist economy and a parliamentary democracy.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Source: Ethics, Chapter One, "Does Man Exist?"

Hope, Democracy, History

“True we can not see God, but we can see the genius of God by works for His hands. We can see by the order of creation that a Creator must exist; reason, logic and common sense point to that conclusion. It is the epitome of foolishness to say our world with its seasons, weather patterns, trees, flowers, birds etc…was the result of some explosion in space of which our earth was a part. How can we say that the human body “just happened” with no intelligent creator behind it? The motive for saying there is no God is deeper than just ignorance.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)

God, World, Intelligence, Flowers

“The plain fact is that many of the reputations which today occupy the poetic limelight are such as would crumble immediately if poetry such as Empson's, with its passion, logic, and formal beauty, were to become widely known.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

John Wain "Ambiguous Gifts", in The Penguin New Writing no. 40 (1950); cited from John Lehmann and Roy Fuller (eds.) The Penguin New Writing 1940-1950: An Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) p. 492.
Criticism

Beauty, Passion

“It had been different during his first year of graduate school, when he temporarily forsook physics to explore instead the realm of the senses. Applying logic to the late-blooming quandries of maturity, he had parsed the elements of encounter, banter, negotiation, and consummation, separating and solving the variables one by one until the problem—if not generally solved—did appear to have tractable special solutions.”

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 236)
Earth (1990)

School, Problem, Sense, Appearance

“Just as the Bible teaches the Golden Rule — “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” — the Mahabharata (5.39.57), predating the Bible, teaches a similar truth, and in almost the exact same wording. Yogis and spiritual adepts in India extend the teaching to its logical limits, showing kindness to all species of life — and this, of course, means vegetarianism. It is hard to be kind to animals if you are eating them. In other words, if you don't want someone eating your entrails, don't eat the entrails of others.”

Steven J. Rosen (1955) American editor, author on Vaishnavism

“The New Carnivores”, in The Agni and the Ecstasy (London: Arktos, 2012), p. 100 https://books.google.it/books?id=fYjX7W6SCLMC&pg=PA100.

Life, Truth, Animals

“If not for the long tail, one might mistake a theropod for a big, toothy, marauding bird in the dark. That theropods are birdlike is logical, since birds are their closest living relatives. Remember that next time you eat a drumstick or scramble some eggs.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 22
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World

Bird, Time

“The first question we should face is: What is the aim of a physical theory? To this question diverse answers have been made, but all of them may be reduced to two main principles:
"A physical theory," certain logicians have replied, "has for its object the explanation of a group of laws experimentally established."
"A physical theory," other thinkers have said, "is an abstract system whose aim is to summarize and classify logically a group of experimental laws without claiming to explain these laws…
Now these two questions — Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? — do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics.
Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics…
Now, to make physical theories depend on metaphysics is surely not the way to let them enjoy the privilege of universal consent.”

Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) French physicist, historian of science

Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)

Law, Way, Question, Nature

“Only an unashamed dogmatist would dare to assert that the issue has finally been resolved now, in favor of the view that, outside logic or mathematics, the method of modern science is the only method to employ in seeking knowledge. The dogmatist who made this assertion would have to be more than ashamed. He would have to blind himself to the fact that his own assertion was not established by the experimental method, nor made as an indisputable conclusion of mathematical reasoning or of purely logical analysis.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Mathematics, Knowledge, Science

“I was brought up in a very logical place," said Linz, who had his bar mitzvah at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. "But I think they would”

Alex D. Linz (1989) American actor, filmmaker

happen
His attitude to miracles.
Article in Jewishjournal.com November 20, 2003

Thinking

“Consider some of the qualities of typical modernistic poetry: very interesting language, a great emphasis on connotation, "texture"; extreme intensity, forced emotion — violence; a good deal of obscurity; emphasis on sensation, perceptual nuances; emphasis on details, on the part rather than on the whole; experimental or novel qualities of some sort; a tendency toward external formlessness and internal disorganization — these are justified, generally, as the disorganization required to express a disorganized age, or, alternatively, as newly discovered and more complex types of organization; an extremely personal style — refine your singularities; lack of restraint — all tendencies are forced to their limits; there is a good deal of emphasis on the unconscious, dream structure, the thoroughly subjective; the poet's attitudes are usually anti-scientific, anti-common-sense, anti-public — he is, essentially, removed; poetry is primarily lyric, intensive — the few long poems are aggregations of lyric details; poems usually have, not a logical, but the more or less associational style of dramatic monologue; and so on and so on. This complex of qualities is essentially romantic; and the poetry that exhibits it represents the culminating point of romanticism.”

Randall Jarrell book Five Young American Poets

"A Note on Poetry," preface to The Rage for the Lost Penny: Five Young American Poets (New Directions, 1940) [p. 49]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Age, Dreams, Sense, Parting

“The natural sciences did not advance in virtue of the universal appeal of rationality. Their theological, classicist and metaphysical opponents were not converted but displaced. All the ancient universities had to be compelled by outside pressure to make room for science; and most nations began to appreciate it only after succumbing to the weapons produced with its aid. To cut a long story short, scientific method has triumphed throughout the world because it bestowed upon those who practised it power over those who did not. Sorcery lost not because of any waning of its intrinsic appeal to the human mind, but because it failed to match the power created by science. But, though abandoned as a tool for controlling nature, incantations remain more effective for manipulating crowds than logical arguments, so that in the conduct of human affairs sorcery continues to be stronger than science.”

Stanislav Andreski (1919–2007) Polish-British sociologist

Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972)

World, Nature, Universe, Science