Tautology Quotes - Page 2

• Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. . . .

  Karl Popper

  Truth, Principles, Logical

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.5, Routledge

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• In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection -quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology.

  Arthur Koestler

  Believe, Knowledge, Magic

  "Janus: A Summing Up". Book by Arthur Koestler, p. 184-5, 1983.

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• Being both entrepreneurial and social is no longer an oxymoron, but rather a tautology.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Social, Entrepreneurial, Oxymoron

  Jeremy Rifkin (2014). “The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism”, p.19, Palgrave Macmillan

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• I don't think in terms of that bizarre tautology 'value for money' in my literary and journalistic work - and nor will I in my academic role. However, if I don't believe I'm helping my students towards a fuller and more empowering relationship with the world, then I'll resign.

  Will Self

  Believe, Thinking, Empowering

  "Why I said yes to Professor Self" by Will Self, www.theguardian.com. February 22, 2012.

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• Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology - we are quite unable to imagine the contrary...

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Mind, World, Consciousness

  "Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists" edited by Ken Wilber, 1984.

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• A long memory is the most subversive idea in America. A tautology is a thing which is tautological. A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention. If your kids look like you, it's hereditory. If they look like the neighbor, it's the environment. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

  Dave Barry

  Witty, Memories, Kids

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• How sublime is the audacious tautology of Mohammed, God is God!

  William Rounseville Alger

  Sublime, Audacious

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• A logic proof is: you get a starting point and an ending point, and you have to get there through all these different steps and tautologies. I approach novel writing that way. When I get to the end I have to go back and connect everything.

  Heidi Julavits

  Writing, Way, Steps

  "The Brilliant Complications Of Heidi Julavits". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 28, 2012.

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• We could not bring democracy and freedom to Vietnam at a cost acceptable to ourselves. The idea that that was what we were trying to do, is again, a tautology, it's true by definition because we were doing, and the state is noble by definition. That's called "extreme liberalism".

  Noam Chomsky

  Ideas, Democracy, Trying

  Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

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• The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.

  A.J. Ayer

  Self, Principles, Use

  "Language, Truth, and Logic" by A.J. Ayer, (p. 77), 1936.

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