Logical Quotes - Page 9

• Would a watermelon in the midst of a chase sequence not be, in its own organic way, emblematic of our entire misunderstood enterprise? At once totally logical and perfectly irrational?

  W. D. Richter

  Misunderstood, Way, Midst

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• Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Mean, Writing, Practice

  Natalie Goldberg (2016). “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within”, p.4, Shambhala Publications

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• If I go out into nature, into the unknown, to the fringes of knowledge, everything seems mixed up and contradictory, illogical, and incoherent. This is what research does; it smooths out contradictions and makes things simple, logical, and coherent.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Knowledge, Science, Simple

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• Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime.

  Charlie Munger

  Simple, Long, Financial

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• Play stimulates the parts of the brain involved in both careful, logical reasoning and carefree, unbound exploration.

  Greg McKeown

  Logical Reasoning, Play, Brain

  "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less". Book by Greg McKeown, 2014.

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• Whatever I think the song sounds like is what I'll name it. It's a feeling thing; it's not logical at all.

  Earl Sweatshirt

  Song, Thinking, Names

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• And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the National Assembly he was a liberal; now he is a republican. Isn't it then logical that he should be thrown into gaol, July 1, on suspicion of passing military secrets to the enemy?

  Hilary Mantel

  Military, July, Secret

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• Of all forms of visible otherworldliness, it seems to me, the Gothic is at once the most logical and the most beautiful. It reaches up magnificently-and a good half of it is palpably useless.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Half, Useless

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• Argument should be polite as well as logical.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Argument, Should, Polite

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• Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Lying, Opinion, Assumption

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.1223, Delphi Classics

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• The demise of Google Reader, if logical, is a reminder of how far we've come from the cuddly old 'I'm Feeling Lucky' Google days, in which there was a foreseeably-astonishing delight in the way Google's evolving design tricks anticipated what users would like.

  James Fallows

  Design, Feelings, Google

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• The planet Mars -- crimson and bright, filling our telescopes with vague intimations of almost-familiar landforms -- has long formed a celestial tabula rasa on which we have inscribed our planeto-logical theories, utopian fantasies, and fears of alien invasion or ecological ruin.

  David Grinspoon

  Long, Mars, Invasion

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• Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''shaggy dog'' stories; they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.

  W. H. Auden

  Dog, Missing, Religion

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• I hope that China will continue with space exploration. It would be logical to have international co-operation. I hope that it will come about and that I can be involved in it.

  Leroy Chiao

  Space, Would Be, Exploration

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• The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  School, Artist, Mad

  "The Allowable Rhyme". Book by H. P. Lovecraft, 1915.

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• Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences. There are many things throughout the history of science which we now think to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that which would fit that definition. Yes, astrology is in fact one.

  Michael Behe

  Thinking, Astrology, Data

  "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District". Trial transcript: Day 11, www.talkorigins.org. October 18, 2005.

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• True, more than a half of the green graves in the Grafton cemetery are marked "Unknown," and sometimes it occurs that one thinks of the contradiction involved in "honoring the memory" of him of whom no memory remains to honor; but the attempt seems to do no great harm to the living, even to the logical.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Memories, Thinking, Honor

  Ambrose Bierce (2002). “Shadows of Blue & Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce”, p.280, Forge Books

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• [A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet. Not to have a national anthem would be logical.

  George Orwell

  Would Be, Use, World

  George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945”

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• Schizophrenia --its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it--remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the "double bind"--a situation in which no matter what a person does, he "can't win." It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms

  Gregory Bateson

  Communication, Winning, Doe

  Gregory Bateson (1972). “Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology”, p.201, University of Chicago Press

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• We have two distinct types of political organization to take into account; and clearly, too, when their origins are considered, it is impossible to make out that the one is a mere perversion of the other. Therefore when we include both types under a general term like government, we get into logical difficulties; difficulties of which most writers on the subject have been more or less vaguely aware, but which, until within the last half-century, none of them has tried to resolve.

  Albert J. Nock

  Government, Organization, Two

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock, (p. 38), 1935.

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• [Modern science] passed through a long period of uncertainty and inconclusive experiment, but as the instrumental aids to research improved, and the results of observation accumulated, phantoms of the imagination were exorcised, idols of the cave were shattered, trustworthy materials were obtained for logical treatment, and hypotheses by long and careful trial were converted into theories.

  Thomas George Bonney

  Science, Idols, Long

  Thomas George Bonney (1913). “The Present Relations of Science and Religion”

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• There is no logical staircase running from the physics of 10-28 cm. to the physics of 1028 light-years.

  Norwood Russell Hanson

  Running, Science, Light

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• The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Rejection, Effort, Intellectual

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.41, Routledge

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• A theorem is a proposition which is a strict logical consequence of certain definitions and other propositions.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Definitions, Certain, Strict

  "Various meanings of 'theory'". American Political Science Review, 52.04, 1958.

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• Although the drama of games of strategy is strongly linked with the psychological aspects of the conflict, game theory is not concerned with these aspects. Game theory, so to speak, plays the board. It is concerned only with the logical aspects of strategy.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Drama, Games, Play

  "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory". Scientific American, (p. 110), December 1962.

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