Logic Quotes - Page 26

• If we understood the world, we would realize that there is a logic of harmony underlying its manifold apparent dissonances.

  Jean Sibelius

  World, Realizing, Harmony

  "Living Biographies of Great Composers" by Henry Thomas and Dana Lee Thomas, Garden City (NY): Blue Ribbon, (p. 309), 1946.

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• I am a plain practical man, not one of your theorists and splitters of hairs and choppers of logic.

  James G. Frazer

  Men, Hair, Choppers

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic. It's just I simply can't accept that. It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.

  George W. Bush

  Children, Islamic, Thinking

  President's News Conference, www.washingtonpost.com. September 15, 2006.

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• Had the jury convicted on proper instructions it would be the end of the matter. But juries are not bound by what seems inescapable logic to judges.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Judging, Would Be, Matter

  "Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 276". Judicial opinion, 1952.

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• I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups - (a) Love of the strange and fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Groups, Three, Taste

  Letter to Reinhardt Kleiner (7 March 1920), in "Selected Letters I, 1911-1924" edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, (p. 110), 1964.

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• We had principles in mathematics that were granted to be absolute in mathematics for over 800 years, but new science has gotten rid of those absolutism, gotten forward other different logics of looking at mathematics, and sort of turned the way we look at it as a science altogether after 800 years.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Years, Way, Principles

  "President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University". www.washingtonpost.com. September 24, 2007.

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• By abstaining from all definite content, whether as formal logic and theory of science or as the legend of Being beyond all beings, philosophy declared its bankruptcy regarding concrete social goals.

  Theodor Adorno

  Philosophy, Goal, Legends

  Theodor W. Adorno (2012). “Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords”, p.6, Columbia University Press

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• It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland.

  James Russell Lowell

  Poetry, Mastery, Ancient

  James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton (1904). “The Complete Writings of James Russell Lowell”

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• It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith-as mysterious as faith itself. Like faith, it is ultimately not rooted in logic; it is a change in the climate of the mind.

  George Orwell

  Loss, Mysterious Things, Mind

  George Orwell (1976). “The Penguin complete novels of George Orwell”

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• Alternative medicine people call themselves "holistic" and say it's the "whole" approach. Well, if it's the whole approach, let it be the mind as well. Use logic, use sense, use the incredible five wits you were given by creation.

  Stephen Fry

  Medicine, People, Mind

  "Room 101" (Season 6 Episode 10, 2001), (1994-).

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• At one time, many philosophers held that faultless "laws of thought" were somehow inherent, a priori, in the very nature of mind. This belief was twice shaken in the past century; first when Russell and his successors showed how the logic men employ can be defective, and later when Freud and Piaget started to reveal the tortuous ways in which our minds actually develop.

  Jean Piaget

  Past, Men, Law

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• If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Use, Tricks, Ifs

  "Culture and Value" by Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by Peter Winch, (p. 24e), 1980.

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• The great monuments are raised up like dams, pitting the logic of majesty and authority against all the shady elements: it is in the form of cathedrals and palaces that Church and State speak and impose silence on the multitudes.

  Georges Bataille

  Silence, Church, Dams

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• The statement of ideas in a poem may have to do with logic. More profoundly, it may be identified with the emotional progression of the poem, in terms of the music and images, so that the poem is alive throughout. Another, more fundamental statement in poetry, is made through the images themselves those declarations, evocative, exact, and musical, which move through time and are the actions of a poem.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Moving, Emotional, Ideas

  "The Life of Poetry". Book by Muriel Rukeyser, p. 31, 1949.

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• Weak logic, inconsistencies and alienation from the people are common features of authoritarianism. The relentless attempts of totalitarian regimes to prevent free thought and new ideas and the persistent assertion of their own rightness bring on them an intellectual stasis which they project on to the nation at large. Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Ideas, People, Intellectual

  "In Quest of Democracy". Essay by Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991.

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• The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place.

  Arundhati Roy

  War, Home, Sight

  Arundhati Roy (2001). “Power Politics”, South End Pr

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• History works itself out by an inevitable internal logic.

  Terry Eagleton

  Inevitable, Internals

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

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• The ontological concept of truth is in the centre of a logic which may serve as a model of pre- technological rationality. It is the rationality of a two-dimensional universe of discourse which, contrasts with the of thought and behavior that develop in the execution of the technological project.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Two, May, Execution

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.134, Routledge

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• In [Aristotle's] formal logic, thought is organized in a manner very different from that of the Platonic dialogue. In this formal logic, thought is indifferent toward its objects. Whether they are mental or physical, whether they pertain to society or to nature, they become subject to the same general laws of organization, calculation, and conclusion - but they do so as fungible signs or symbols, in abstraction from their particular "substance." This general quality (quantitative quality) is the precondition of law and order - in logic as well as in society - the price of universal control.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Order, Law, Organization

  "One-Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse, (p. 136), 1964.

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• Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts - that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Philosophy, Men, Objectivity

  "One-Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse, (p. 141), 1964.

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• Logic is not only an exact science, but is the most simple and elementary of all sciences; it ought therefore undoubtedly to find some place in every course of education.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Simple, Courses, Ought

  William Stanley Jevons (1870). “Elementary Lessons in Logic: Deductive and Inductive : with Copious Questions and Examples and a Vocabulary of Logical Terms”, p.6

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• Logic should no longer be considered an elegant and learned accomplishment; it should take its place as an indispensable study for every well-informed person.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Accomplishment, Study, Should

  William Stanley Jevons (1870). “Elementary Lessons in Logic: Deductive and Inductive : with Copious Questions and Examples and a Vocabulary of Logical Terms”, p.6

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• If a work of art is to be truly immortal, it must pass quite beyond the limits of the human world, without any sign of common sense and logic. In this way the work will draw nearer to dream and to the mind of a child.

  Giorgio de Chirico

  Dream, Art, Children

  Quoted in Saranne Alexandrian Surrealist Art (1970).

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• A successful politician must not only be able to read the mood of the public, he must have the skill to get the public on his side. The public is moved by mood more than logic, by instinct more than reason, and that is something that every politician must make use of or guard against.

  Jean Chretien

  Successful, Skills, Use

  "Straight from the Heart". Book by Jean Chretien, 1985.

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• The word "essay" means to try out, test, probe. In the essay style, successive clauses and sentences are not produced by an overarching logic, but by association; the impression that prose gives is that it can go anywhere in a manner wholly unpredictable.

  Stanley Fish

  Mean, Giving, Style

  "How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One". Book by Stanley Fish, 2011.

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