Tautology Quotes

• To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Sheep, Ideas

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.33, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Impossible, Truth Is, Contradiction

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2016). “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus”, p.15, Clube de Autores

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• Once the last trace of emotion has been eradicated, nothing remains of thought but absolute tautology.

  Theodor Adorno

  Lasts, Emotion, Remains

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.123, Verso

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• If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.

  Dan Quayle

  Funny, Running, Stupid

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• All mathematics is tautology.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Mathematics

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• Phrases like Worship Service or Service of Worship are tautologies. To worship God means to serve him. Basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for Him that He needs to have done - run errands for Him, carry messages for Him, fight on His side, feed His lambs, and so on. The other way is to do things for Him that you need to do - sing songs for Him, tell Him what's on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice in Him.

  Frederick Buechner

  Running, Song, Mean

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• Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Philosophical, Contradiction, Shows

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2016). “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus”, p.15, Clube de Autores

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• It's no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

  George H. W. Bush

  Funny, Stupid, Patriotic

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• Reason is simply a vast tautology.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Reason

  J. M. Coetzee (2016). “The Lives of Animals: The Lives of Animals [Princeton Classics]”, p.25, Princeton University Press

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• The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we would probably be left completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Philosophy, Simple, Silence

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• All correct reasoning is a grand system of tautologies, but only God can make direct use of that fact

  Herbert Simon

  Use, Facts, Reasoning

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• Pure logic could never lead us to anything but tautologies; it can create nothing new; not from it alone can any science issue.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Issues, Logic

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.339, Modern Library

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• It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Interesting, Important

  'Adventures of Ideas' (1933) pt. 4, ch. 16

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• Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation.

  Peter Atkins

  Ignorance, Atheism, Resorts

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• The two sides of the equation are the same. We have a tautology. The definition is meaningless.

  Norman Macbeth

  Two Sides, Definitions, Equations

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• The man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four" ... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Men, Two, Chess Pieces

  Jorge Luis Borges (2001). “The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory”, Penguin Modern Classics

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• It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Truth, Interesting, Important

  Adventures of Ideas pt. 4, ch. 16 (1933)

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• Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality.

  Will Self

  Race, Class, Age

  Interview with Sarah Kinson, www.theguardian.com. May 09, 2007.

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• A critical discourse that had respect for the mystery of art would look to the sense of life which finds expression in paradox, metaphor, tautology, and syntax.

  Denis Donoghue

  Art, Expression, Syntax

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• A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seedword is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but and if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb. Good poems, therefore, are always close to banality, over which, however, they tower like precipices.

  Alasdair Gray

  Numbers, Immature, Ordinary

  "Unlikely Stories, Mostly". Book by Alasdair Gray, 1983.

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• There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy that connecting with someone through the agency of the written word. Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality. The reader I seek is a tautology, for he/she is simply exactly the person who wants to read what I have written...

  Will Self

  Race, Class, Ideas

  "Will Self". Interview with Sarah Kinson, www.theguardian.com. May 9, 2007.

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• Logic issues in tautologies, mathematics in identities, philosophy in definitions; all trivial, but all part of the vital work of clarifying and organising our thought.

  Frank P. Ramsey

  Philosophy, Hard Work, Science

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• My mother was Irish and she was superstitious, if you'll forgive the tautology.

  Rosalind Russell

  Mother, Forgiving, Superstitious

  Rosalind Russell, Chris Chase (1979). “Life is a Banquet”

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• lovers, it is well known, carry the art of tautology to its utmost perfection, and even the most impatient of them can both bear to hear and repeat the same things times without number, till the sound becomes the echo to the sense or the nonsense previously uttered.

  Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

  Art, Numbers, Echoes

  Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (1841). “The inheritance, by the author of Marriage. By the author of 'Marriage'. Revised by the author”, p.316

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• Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again.

  Gregory Bateson

  Perception, Would Be, Matter

  "Mind and Nature - a Necessary Unity". Book by Gregory Bateson, new edition, 1988.

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