quotations about logic
The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Notebooks
Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
Mostly Harmless
It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
For nothing is more democratic than logic; it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Gay Science
What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
The logical man must either deny all miracles or none.
CHARLES ALEXANDER EASTMAN
The Soul of the Indian
Metaphysics may be, after all, only the art of being sure of something that is not so, and logic only the art of going wrong with confidence.
JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH
The Modern Temper
Logic is immaturity weaving its nets of gossamer wherewith it aims to catch the behemoth of knowledge.
MIKHAIL NAIMY
The Book of Mirdad
Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Logic helps us to strip off the outward disguise of things, and to behold and judge of them in their own nature.
I. WATTS
attributed, Day's Collacon
As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.
R. WHATELY
attributed, Day's Collacon
What does the brain matter compared with the heart?
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
Logic is the essence of truth, and truth is the most powerful tyrant; and tyrants hate the truth.
I. I. KOZLOF
attributed, Day's Collacon
Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
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
Through the Looking-glass
Logic is something the mind has created to conceal its timidity, a hocus-pocus designed to give formal validity to conclusions we are willing to accept if everybody else in our set will too.
CARL LOTUS BECKER
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers
If a man can play the true logician, and have judgment as well as invention, he may do great matters.
LORD BACON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge.
BENJAMIN JOWETT
attributed, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett
Logic cripples and constrains; it forces one into narrow and mechanical modes of thought that cut one off from a vast range of superior thoughts, feelings and perceptions.
JOHN M. DOLAN
Inference and Imagination
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Orthodoxy