Logic

Quotes about logic, rationality, and logical fallacies.

Sourced

Logic and rationality

• Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
  • murphy's law

• Logic hasn't wholly dispelled the society of witches and prophets and sorcerers and soothsayers.
  • Raymond F. Jones, The Non-Statistical Man

• 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 is logic. That's all I say.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, The One-Hoss Shay

• Logic is one thing and commonsense another.
  • Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book (1927)

• Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.
  • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, "Weeds & Moss", My Ireland

• 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 (1929)

• These, briefly, are the key elements of the stereotype: 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; logic is an enemy of wit and humor (Mr. Spock's face was always an impassive mask); logic makes us dull and pedantic (Mr. Spock always spoke in a monotone); logic presupposes a simple-minded, black-and-white, yes-no conception of the world. ... Logic misses the point of half the things we ordinarily say and cannot match the insight of the humblest person's common sense.
  • John M. Dolan, Inference and Imagination

• Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Flight to Arras (1942), as translated by Lewis Galantière

• Logic and mathematics seem to be the only domains where self-evidence manages to rise above triviality; and this it does, in those domains, by a linking of self-evidence on to self-evidence in the chain reaction known as proof.
  • Willard van Orman Quine, The Web of Belief

• "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "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, Chapter 4

• ...logicians tell us that a system of ideas containing a contradiction can be used to deduce any statement whatsoever, no matter how absurd.
  • What is Your Dangerous Idea? (2007), John Brockman, ed., "Introduction," Steven Pinker, p. xxix

• Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Logical fallacies

Appeal to authority

• This fallacy [appeal to authority] is not in itself an error; it is impossible to learn much in today’s world without letting somebody else crunch the numbers and offer us explanations. And teachers are sources of necessary information. But how we choose our "authorities" and place a value on such information, is just another skill rarely taught in our education systems. It’s little wonder that to most folk, sound bites and talking heads are enough to count as experts. […] Teaching is reinforcing the appeal to authority, where anybody who seems more intelligent than you must ultimately be right. […] We educators must simply role-model critical thinking. […] Educators themselves have to be prepared to show that “evidence” and “answers” are two separate things by firmly believing that, themselves.
  • Mike McRae, Australian teacher and guest columnist, "Educating Future Critical Thinkers", Swift: Online Newsletter of the JREF, 31 March 2006