Sunday, March 1, 2015 – For Spock
Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end. ~ Leonard Nimoy
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. ~ Albert Einstein
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. ~ Ambrose Bierce
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The mind has its own logic but does not often let others in on it. ~ Bernard DeVoto
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. ~ William Butler Yeats
Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic. ~ Lewis Carroll
Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic. ~ Thomas Huxley
Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman. ~ Marian Anderson
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California. ~ Edward Abbey
The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism. ~ Paul Ricoeur
Logic and mathematics are nothing but specialized linguistic structures. ~ Jean Piaget
Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing. ~ Claude Levi-Strauss
Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic. ~ William E. Gladstone
The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational. ~ A. N. Wilson
Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! ~ E. M. Forster
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. ~ Laurence J. Peter
Logic works, metaphysics contemplates. ~ Joseph Joubert
Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth. ~ Jean de la Bruyere
Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge. ~ Stendhal
The world is full of strange phenomena that cannot be explained by the laws of logic or science. Dennis Rodman is only one example. ~ Dave Barry
Better to be without logic than without feeling. ~ Charlotte Brontë
Intuition is a suspension of logic due to impatience. ~ Rita Mae Brown
Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities. ~ Lord Dunsany
We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic. ~ David Russell
Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you. ~ Frank O’Hara
Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation. ~ Mason Cooley
The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay
The human brain has evolved the capacity to impose a narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic, on whatever it encounters, no matter how apparently random. ~ Robin Marantz Henig
I am a master of logic and a powerfully convincing debater. In fact, against my better judgment, I can talk myself out of doing anything. ~ Jarod Kintz
There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined. ~ Albert Camus
Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does. ~ Douglas Adams
It turned out I was pretty good in science. But again, because of the small budget, in science class we couldn’t afford to do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually, I think that class was called Religion. Religion class was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were being taught in all the other classes. ~ George Carlin
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. The theologians, taking one with another, are adept logicians, but every now and then they have to resort to sophistries so obvious that their whole case takes on an air of the ridiculous. Even the most logical religion starts out with patently false assumptions. It is often argued in support of this or that one that men are so devoted to it that they are willing to die for it. That, of course, is as silly as the Santa Claus proof. Other men are just as devoted to manifestly false religions, and just as willing to die for them. Every theologian spends a large part of his time and energy trying to prove that religions for which multitudes of honest men have fought and died are false, wicked, and against God. ~ H. L. Mencken
I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody’s easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into. ~ Jonathan Swift
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
We can’t avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well. ~ Peter Kreeft
In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance. ~ Thomas Jefferson
Reason means truth and those who are not governed by it take the chance that someday the sunken fact will rip the bottom out of their boat. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches. ~ Aldous Huxley
Logic hasn’t wholly dispelled the society of witches and prophets and sorcerers and soothsayers. ~Raymond F. Jones
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason. ~ Samuel Butler
Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer than a toss-up. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce
No, no, you’re not thinking; you’re just being logical. ~ Niels Bohr
Just Above Sunset 