Logic Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Elie Wiesel

Maria Mitchell

Hilary Putnam

Joseph Schumpeter

Benjamin Jowett

Richard Courant

Miracles in mysticism don't occupy such an important place. It's metaphor, for the peasants, for the crowds, to impress people. What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. You plunge into it. Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Practice has a logic which is not that of the logician.

Pierre Bourdieu

Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic.

Oddly enough, Putnam believes part of the attraction of some of these formalisms is their obscurity:

I think part of the appeal of mathematical logic is that the formulas look mysterious - you write backward Es!

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. There will come with the greater love of science greater love to one another. Living more nearly to Nature is living farther from the world and from its follies, but nearer to the world's people; it is to be of them, with them, and for them, and especially for their improvement. We cannot see how impartially Nature gives of her riches to all, without loving all, and helping all; and if we cannot learn through Nature's laws the certainty of spiritual truths, we can at least learn to promote spiritual growth while we are together, and live in a trusting hope of a greater growth in the future.

With the end of the nominating process, American politics leaves logic behind.

Theodore H. White

Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge.

Benjamin Jowett

Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?

Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.

Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.

Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

Joseph Schumpeter

Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.

Richard Courant

Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt.

Frege has the merit of...finding a third assertion by recognising the world of logic which is neither mental nor physical.

Bertrand Russell

This task entrusted to us by God the Creator requires us to grasp the rhythm and logic of creation. But we are often driven by pride of domination, of possessions, manipulation, of exploitation; we do not "care" for it, we do not respect it, we do not consider it as a free gift that we must care for.

Men are further beholding... generally to chance, or anything else, than to logic, for the invention or arts and sciences.

Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.

Henry David Thoreau

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Sir, we must beware of needless innovation, especially when guided by logic.

Winston Churchill

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Aristotle can be regarded as the father of logic. But his logic is too scholastic, full of subtleties, and fundamentally has not been of much value to the human understanding. It is a dialectic and an organon for the art of disputation.