Logic Quotes - Page 21

• One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Weakness, Principles, Ordinary

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy in America”, p.34

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• By the cold Darwinian logic of natural selection, evolution codifies happenstance into strategy.

  David Quammen

  Evolution, Cold, Strategy

  David Quammen (2012). “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic”, p.17, W. W. Norton & Company

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.

  Thomas Browne

  Beauty, Elephants, Bears

  Sir Thomas Browne, James Thomas Fields (1862). “Religio Medici: A Letter to a Friend, Christian Morals, Urn-burial, and Other Papers”, p.35

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What eludes logic is the most precious element in us, and one can draw nothing from a syllogism that the mind has not put there in advance.

  Andre Gide

  Mind, Elements, Elude

  4 Copy quote

• Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

  Walt Whitman

  Night, Soul, Pessimism

  Walt Whitman (2009). “The Americanness of Walt Whitman”, p.21, Wildside Press LLC

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.

  Albert Camus

  Forgiveness, Republic, Impossible

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.124, Vintage

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, or mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Blessed, Law, Ideas

  Robert M. Pirsig (2009). “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values”, p.43, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that children have a power to imagine that is almost magical when compared to the adult imagination, and this is something irrevocable that a child loses when he or she becomes bound by logic. We adults continue to have our children

  Joseph Weizenbaum

  Children, Thinking, Imagination

  13 Copy quote

• The world of shabby gentility is like no other; its sacrifices have less logic, its standards are harsher, its relation to reality is dimmer than comfortable property or plain poverty can understand.

  Murray Kempton

  Sacrifice, Reality, World

  Murray Kempton (2012). “Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties”, p.16, New York Review of Books

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.

  Don DeLillo

  Heart, Men, Games

  Libra pt. 2 (1988)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sooner you 'settle' the sooner you'll be allowed home" was the ruling logic; and "if you can't adapt yourself to living in a mental hospital how do you expect to be able to live 'out in the world'?" How indeed?

  Janet Frame

  Home, World, Able

  Janet Frame (1980). “Faces in the water”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• They [the mathematicians of the Enlightenment] defined their terms vaguely and used their methods loosely, and the logic of their arguments was made to fit the dictates of their intuition. In short, they broke all the laws of rigor and of mathematical decorum. The veritable orgy which followed the introduction of the infinitesimals... was but a natural reaction. Intuition had too long been held imprisoned by the severe rigor of the Greeks. Now it broke loose, and there were no Euclids to keep its romantic flight in check.

  Tobias Dantzig

  Law, History, Long

  4 Copy quote

• ... We in the USA have been depending on prayers, pleading, and self-abasement to a deity to bring us magical advantages, and have been encouraged to attribute our prosperity and general success among nations, to that sort of action. In my opinion, hard work and dedication to logic and reason ought to be recognized as the reasons for our achievements, not appeals to a mythical friend-in-the-sky. We got where we are in spite of, not because of, those incantations.

  James Randi

  Prayer, Hard Work, Dedication

  33 Copy quote

• ... landscapes or still-lifes I paint in between the abstract works; they constitute about one-tenth of my production. On the one hand they are useful, because I like to work from nature - although I do use a photograph - because I think that any detail from nature has a logic I would like to see in abstraction as well.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Thinking, Hands

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The laws against public nudity make no sense. The idea that Jerry Falwell can go topless while Cindy Crawford cannot is an absolute affront to logic, common sense and the 5000 year human struggle for aesthetic taste.

  Peter McWilliams

  Struggle, Years, Law

  Peter McWilliams (1996). “Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country”, Mary Book / Prelude Press

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• A sharp sense of the ironic can be the equivalent of the faith that moves mountains. Far more quicky than reason or logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.

  Moss Hart

  Moving, Humor, Self

  moss hart (1959). “act one”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing that one can say about acting, writing, producing or directing that cannot be revoked in the next breath. Nothing is immutable. The logic of one year is a folly of the next.

  Moss Hart

  Writing, Years, Acting

  moss hart (1959). “act one”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... on every important issue life transcends logic and it is folly to depend on reason alone.

  Robert Gordis

  Life, Issues, Important

  Robert Gordis (1960). “A Faith for Moderns”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Typically what happens is, somebody drags an idea from the past that worked in an old set of logics that they try to apply to the new one. And it doesn't work.

  Michael Nesmith

  Past, Ideas, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?

  Alan Lightman

  Science, Cosmos, World

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.29, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness.

  Greil Marcus

  Hearing Things, Wake Up, Want

  "Greil Marcus: a life in writing". Interview with Simon Reynolds, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I tend to splurge on fancy dresses because I always think I'll get a lot of wear out of them, but it's false logic. You should really spend more money on the things you wear every day, like jeans.

  Alexa Chung

  Thinking, Jeans, Dresses

  "Interview: Alexa Chung covers our spring fashion issue". Interview with Rachel LeWinter, www.timeout.com. March 11, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I mean, I've had bartenders and waiters and waitresses make a comment about a joke of mine, like pointing out some sort of logic error or something that I've never even thought about, and they're right.

  Todd Barry

  Mean, Errors, Bartender

  25 Copy quote

• My forms are not abstractions of things in the real world. They're also not symbols. I would say that my job is to invent these forms and to put them together in a way that keeps your interest, to give the forms a quirky identity so you can engage with them, so you realize there's an inner intelligence or logic.

  Caio Fonseca

  Jobs, Real, Giving

  "Caio Fonseca Comes Out of Isolation". Interview with Meghan Dailey, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 28, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My mother's incredibly giving, almost too giving at times. And, my dad is a real logical person. He's got logic for every situation. They've been married for 24 years, so there was that stability, also. I really learned to think on my own at a very young age.

  Brian Austin Green

  Mother, Dad, Real

  4 Copy quote