But Logical Quotes & Sayings

Still, the logical part of her realized that the hazel-eyed, dark-scruff iteration of This Guy who sat
across from her right then hadn't actually done anything wrong to her. Because of that, she smiled in
an effort to be polite. "That's nice of you to ask. But, unfortunately, I'm going to have to say no."
"Great." He nodded, as if expecting this very answer. Then his brow furrowed, and he cocked his
head. "Wait - what?"
Sidney bit her lip to hold back a laugh. Ah ... when she told this story later to Trish, the perplexed
look on this guy's face would be the highlight. — Julie James

But where in all of this description is the essential chair? Have we yet come even close to a full description of it? Did we even mention that several hundred years ago, it wasn't a chair but a tree? Where is it now? Here? Or in memory.
We cannot even fully describe a chair and yet we say "I am." "I am ... ". Understand. There is no "I am." Nothing "is." Try to describe all that you are. Simultaneously discern the logical flaw in what I've just said. Now! Feel the white flame. — Grant Morrison

Horses are consistent and logical. The horse will do what is easiest for him. If you make it easy for him to buck you off, kick you, and run away, that's just what he's going to do. And more power to him. But if you make it easy for the horse to be relaxed and calm and accurate - and also have it be a beautiful dance between you and the horse - it won't be too long before he'll be hunting for that just as hard as you are. Whatever you make easy for the horse, that's what he's going to get good at. — Buck Brannaman

But once we realize that people have very different kinds of minds, different kinds of strengths
some people are good in thinking spatially, some in thinking language, others are very logical, other people need to be hands on and explore actively and try things out
then education, which treats everybody the same way, is actually the most unfair education. — Howard Gardner

Biochemists assume that the three cellular kingdoms evolved from a single common ancestor, because the alternative of supposing an independent origin of life two or more times presents still greater difficulties. The common ancestor is merely hypothetical, as are the numerous transitional intermediate forms that would have to connect such enormously different groups to the ancestor. From a Darwinist viewpoint all these hypothetical creatures are a logical necessity, but there is no empirical confirmation that they existed. — Phillip E. Johnson

I'd put two .45 slugs in him from fifteen feet. Pretty much does the trick. If it doesn't then your only logical ammunition upgrade is Kryptonite. But — Jonathan Maberry

For millennia philosophers and saints have tried to reason out a logical scheme for the universe ... until Hilda came along and demonstrated that the universe is not logical but whimsical, its structure depending solely on the dreams and nightmares of non-logical dreamers. — Robert A. Heinlein

- Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a protestant?
- I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent? — James Joyce

For example, the philosophers who were interested in logic were probably rather logical for mathematicians. But the ASL got us together, so we could talk to each other and publish in the same journal. — Stephen Cole Kleene

I'm rarely at a loss for words outside the library. But within its walls I'm required to form sentences that no logical person should ever have to utter, for instance, You can't sleep on the floor at the library under your blanket. — Josh Hanagarne

There are two types of codes, ciphers, and true codes. In the first, letters, or symbols that stand for letters, are shuffled and juggled according to a pattern. In the second, letters, words, or groups of words are replaced by other letters, symbols, or words. A code can be one type or the other, or a combination. But both have this in common: once you find the key, you just plug it in and out come logical sentences. A language, however, has its own internal logic, its own grammar, its own way of putting thoughts together with words that span various spectra of meaning. There is no key you can plug in to unlock the exact meaning. At best you can get a close approximation. — Samuel R. Delany

This procedure [selecting the simplest law], however, has no logical justification but only a psychological one. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on intuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludicrous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer. — Stephen King

I believe, or sense, that the universe has not been constructed from a purely mechanical, logical, rational point of view, but there is a magic afoot in the universe, that God can be looked at as a kind of a magician in which we get to perform tricks ourselves, without knowing that we're doing so. — Fred Alan Wolf

I'm not saying parenting cured my narcissism, but it changed me and continues to change me every day. I am now a teeny tiny bit less of a narcissist. Being a parent is a selfless adventure. The worldview of "Take care of yourself first" is no longer logical to a sane person if your baby wakes up hungry in the middle of the night. You can't be like, "What's that? The baby is starving? Eh, forget her, I've got to get some sleep." For me, parenting was literally a wake-up call from my own simple selfishness. In other words, I'm not quite as horrible as I used to be. — Jim Gaffigan

command-and-control management has created service organizations that are full of waste, offer poor service, depress the morale of those who work in them and are beset with management factories that not only do not contribute to improving the work, but actually make it worse. The management principles that have guided the development of these organizations are logical - but it's the wrong logic. The — John Seddon

Surrealism, the gospel of chaos, found itself compelled, from its very inception, to create an order. But at first it only dreamed of destruction - by poetry, to begin with - on the plane of imprecation, and later by the use of actual weapons. The trial of the real world has become, by logical
development, the trial of creation. — Albert Camus

I wondered if I could get him to stop saying it if I slapped him a few times. But such logical and rewarding actions are discouraged in the workplace, even when they make perfect sense, — Jeff Lindsay

Words accrue and lose meaning through a semantic mobility dependent on the community in which they thrive, and these meanings cannot be divorced from bodily sensation and emotion. Slang emerges among a circle of speakers. Irony requires double consciousness, reading one meaning and understanding another. Elegant prose involves a feeling for the rhythms and the music of sentences, a product of the sensual pleasure a writer takes in the sounds of words and the varying metric beats of sentences. Creative translation must take all this into account. If a meaning is lost in one sentence, it might be gained or added to the next one. Such considerations are not strictly logical. They do not involve a step-by-step plan but come from the translator's felt understanding of the two languages involved. Rodney — Siri Hustvedt

This world extends beyond this room, Adele. There are the streets of Vienna and beyond that Europe and beyond that a globe in space in orbit around a star in a universe. But how do I know that for sure? I cannot see the globe spinning on its axis right now as I speak to you. How can I be sure? I can be sure because it's logical; the mathematics is sound and respected by the orbits of the planets. I can verify it's true, not by looking at it, but by thinking about it. — Janna Levin

When a rainbow appears vividly in the sky, you can see its beautiful colors, yet you could not wear as clothing or put it on as an ornament. It arises through the conjunction of various factors, but there is nothing about it that can be grasped. Likewise, thoughts that arise in the mind have no tangible existence or intrinsic solidity. There is no logical reason why thoughts, which have no substance, should have so much power over you, nor is there any reason why you should become their slave. — Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Satan frequently steals the will of God from us due to reasoning. The Lord may direct us to do a certain thing, but if it does not make sense - if it is not logical - we may be tempted to disregard it. What God leads a person to do does not always make logical sense to his mind. His spirit may affirm it and His mind reject it, especially if it would be out of the ordinary or unpleasant or if it would require personal sacrifice or discomfort. — Joyce Meyer

I understand individuals and their personal motivations, but when those same individuals become a part of something bigger, some amorphous corporate ball of greed, I can't anticipate the logical next move, because it has long ago stopped being human. Your average human being has a conscience and the world is structured with checks and balances to shed light on that individual should he or she become something ugly and cruel. But a company can hide its corruption; the individuals responsible can sit innocently and united behind their desks for years before they are discovered. They are as guilty as the guy robbing the liquor store in the ski mask, only they're free to show their faces. I had no idea whether I should be looking for the worker bee or the nest, or both, and my nearsightedness cost my boss his job. — Lisa Lutz

It's true that the French have a certain obsession with sex, but it's a particularly adult obsession. France is the thriftiest of all nations; to a Frenchman sex provides the most economical way to have fun. The French are a logical race. — Anita Loos

But the brain does much more than just recollect it inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes, it generates abstractions. The simplest thought like the concept of the number one has an elaborate logical underpinning. The brain has its own language for testing the structure and consistency of the world. — Carl Sagan

One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner. — Kate Forsyth

The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic. — Charles Sanders Peirce

I am drawn to the wild not because it is wild but because it is sensible, logical, ordered, stable, resilient. Wild nature is everything we're struggling to regain. — Carl Safina

At one o'clock, the ever-logical Right-Eye Grand Steward woke up to discover that during his sleep his left-eyed counterpart had executed three of his advisors for treason, ordered the creation of a new carp pool and banned limericks. Worse still, no progress had been made in tracking down the Kleptomancer, and of the two people believed to be his accomplices, both had been released from prison and one had been appointed food taster. Right-Eye was not amused. He had known for centuries that he could trust nobody but himself. Now he was seriously starting to wonder about himself. — Frances Hardinge

There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana. $7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes. — Milton Friedman

Not that I'm bipolar, but that I'm two people, and not just two people, but two people at odds with each other. The mom and the kid, the homebody and the explorer, the strong and the weak, the logical and the emotional, the funny and the sad, the angry and the calm, the open and the closed, the loved and the hated, the hot and the cold, the alive and the dead, the beautiful and the ugly. It's exhausting. I. Am. Exhausting. — Stacey Turis

The Sun would have wasted its life but for the evolution of life on earth. The one who gives should be grateful to the one who receives. — R.N. Prasher

The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it - once you can honestly say, 'I don't know', then it becomes possible to get at the truth. — Robert A. Heinlein

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world - not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

is perfectly proper to say, in one logical tone of voice, that there exist minds and to say, in another logical tone of voice, that there exist bodies. But these expressions do not indicate two different species of existence, for 'existence' is not a generic word like 'coloured' or 'sexed'. They indicate two different senses of 'exist', — Anonymous

[A]dventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result - and have been since at least the time of Odysseus - of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it again. All adventures happen in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep or the county line, into that place where the structures, laws, and conventions of your upbringing no longer apply, where the support and approval (but also the disapproval and repression) of your family and neighbors are not to be had: then you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret. — Michael Chabon

You long for life and try to settle the problems of life by a logical tangle. And how tiresome, how insolent your outbursts are, and at the same time, how scared you are! You talk nonsense and are pleased with it; you say imprudent things and are constantly afraid of them and apologizing for them. You declare that you are afraid of nothing and at the same time try to ingratiate yourself with us. You declare that you are gnashing your teeth and at the same time you try to be witty so as to amuse us. You know that your witticisms are not witty, but you are evidently well satisfied with their literary value. You may perhaps really have suffered, but you have no respect whatsoever for your own suffering. You may be truthful in what you have said but you have no modesty; out of the pettiest vanity you bring your truth to public exposure, to the market place, to ignominity. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But guilt isn't smart. It isn't logical. It doesn't only live in the places it belongs. — Ally Carter

Life itself today has lost its plane reality: it is projected, not along the old fixed points, but along the dynamic coordinates of Einstein, of revolution. In this new projection, the best-known formulas and objects become displaced, fantastic, familiar-unfamiliar. This is why it is so logical for literature today to be drawn to the fantastic plot, or to an amalgam of reality and fantasy. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

It was a ludicrous notion, born of panic, but no panic is ludicrous in its particular moment. Panic possesses its own logical integrity. — Rick Yancey

And who wouldn't wish that? Certainly everyone here- dressed up as aliens, and wizards, and zombies, and superheroes- wants desperately to be inside a story, to be part of something more logical and meaningful than real life seems to be. Because even worlds with dragons and time machines seem to be more ordered than our own. When you live for stories, when you spend so much of your time immersed in careful constructs of three and five acts, it sometimes feels like you're just stumbling through the rest of life, trying to divine meaningful narrative threads from the chaos. Which, as I learned the hard way this weekend, can be painfully fruitless. Fiction is there when real life fails you. But it's not a substitute. — Sarvenaz Tash

It's logical for us to sing, but not necessarily operatic pieces. — Jose Carreras

We used numbers and rigid systems to fit time into containers we could understand.
But like Nexa said, it was immeasurable. A fluid river no logical structure could hold.
A moment could have the power of years. And years could pass in a moment.
The only thing that forever remained true about time was it never stopped moving forward. — Emma Raveling

Thinking in art and morals and even mathematics is neither the reflection in consciousness of a mechanical order in the brain nor the tracing with the mind's eye of some empirical order in its object, but an endeavour to realize in thought an ideal order which would satisfy an inner demand. The nearer thought comes to its goal, the more it finds itself under constraint by that goal, and dominated in its creative effort by aesthetic or moral or logical relevance. These relations of relevance are not physical or psychological relations. They are normative relations that can enter into the mental current because that current is ... teleological. Their operation marks the presence of a different type of law, which supervenes upon physical and psychological laws when purpose takes control. — Brand Blanshard

Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king. — G.K. Chesterton

I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational path through the day. To the left and right there are an amazing set of distractions that we usually can't afford to follow. But the poet is willing to stop anywhere. — Billy Collins

The spirit of logical analysis should in practice blend with the practical pressure for the adoption of some form of international language, but it should not allow itself to be stampeded by it. — Edward Sapir

In philosophical terms, the opposite of rationalism is not irrationalism but empiricism, that is, a willingness to form beliefs on the basis of experience rather than from a priori deduction. Empirical evidence never yields the dogmatic certainty that accompanies logical deduction. — John Quiggin

"Did God have a mother?" Children, when told that God made the heavens and the earth, innocently ask whether God had a mother. This deceptively simple question has stumped the elders of the church and embarrassed the finest theologians, precipitating some of the thorniest theological debates over the centuries. All the great religions have elaborate mythologies surrounding the divine act of Creation, but none of them adequately confronts the logical paradoxes inherent in the question that even children ask. — Michio Kaku

There's one logical generational difference and that is that young women will have more chances to support a female president than older women. Older women feel it's their last chance, so that's just a factual, obvious difference. But other than that it depends on experience, on individual experience. — Gloria Steinem

Wouldn't it be most logical for her to change herself into a living thing, like a cat or dog, a bird or mouse?'
That would be the easiest transformation, but Risto is above doing something simple.'
Still, I'd be happier if Dibl would quit eating those bugs. Dibl, stop it. You might eat Gilda. — Donita K. Paul

So a)To what extent might human relationships be expressed in a mathematical or logical formula? And b) If so, what signs might be placed between the integers? Plus and minus, self- evidently; sometimes multiplication, and yes. division. But these signs are limited. Thus an entirely failed relationship might be expressed in terms of both loss/minus and division/ reduction, showing a total zero; whereas an entirely successful one can be represented by both addition and multiplication. But what of most relationships? Do they not require to be expressed in notations which are logically insoluble? — Julian Barnes

Your belief without logical evidence & true knowledge is nothing but primitive superstition. — Md. Mujib Ullah

the need to be right at every step is absolutely essential to logical thinking, but quite unnecessary in lateral thinking. It — Franz Badenhorst

You're not actually falling for him, are you?" he asks her one day, on one of the rare occasions he can get her alone.
"I'll pretend you didn't just ask that," she tells him in disgust. But Connor has reasons to wonder.
"On that first night here, he offered you his blanket, and you accepted it," he points out.
"Only because I knew it would make him cold."
"And when he offers you his food, you take it."
"Because it means he goes hungry."
It's coolly logical. Connor finds it amazing that she can put her emotions aside and be as calculating as Roland, beating him at his own game. Another reason for Connor to admire her. — Neal Shusterman

The Bible tells us how to be saved, but textualism goes on to make it tell us that we are saved, something which in the very nature of things it cannot do. Assurance of individual salvation is thus no more than a logical conclusion drawn from doctrinal premises, and the resultant experience wholly mental. — A.W. Tozer

Knowledge and ideas tend to be a bit like experience - nice, but not necessarily useful. Clear thinking, logical priorities and the ability to reason will beat bright ideas and unassisted experience everytime. — Carroll Smith

And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What? Humanity sins but it's God's Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine Father saying to me, 'Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a black buck. Last week two of them ate a camel. The situation has become intolerable. Something must be done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed them you.' ... 'Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up'. What a downright weird story. What a peculiar psychology. — Yann Martel

The beautiful thing about older people is their ability to cut the fat off of conversation. When they talk, they don't go on forever and ever. They say what they have to say, and that's it. That was my grand dad. Some of the things he said stunned me, but his words were logical. I'll never forget them. — Bill Cosby

Philosophy does provide me a structure and a way of thinking. Religion - like the religion I grew up with, Mormonism - also provides a way of thinking. And I think those two structures - one highly logical, the other anything but - are always part of my thought process as I'm putting together a story. — Brian Evenson

It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers - not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell. — Steven Weinberg

I'm staring at Anna's house again. The logical part of my brain tells me that it's just a house. That it's what's inside that makes it horrifying, that makes it dangerous, that it can't possibly be tilting toward me like it's hunting me through the overgrowth of weeds. It can't possibly be trying to jerk free of its foundation and swallow me whole. But that's what it looks like it's doing. — Kendare Blake

But you're supposed to play music, obviously," said Victoria.
Lawrence looked at her in surprise.
"You mean it? I thought you hated it."
"I do mean it," said Victoria. She felt pretty shocked herself. "It's annoying sometimes - well, a lot of the time, really - but it's obviously the thing you're best at, so why shouldn't you do it?" Embarrassed at how happy Lawrence looked, she tried to smooth the wrinkles out of her dirty pajamas. "I mean, it's only logical, isn't it?"
"If you weren't, well, you - I'd want to kiss you right now."
It was fortunate that the room was so dark. Victoria's cheeks turned bright red.
"Well," she said. "Well. — Claire Legrand

It's expected of novels that they should explain the world and create the illusion that things are ultimately logical and coherent. But that's not what I see around me. Often, events remain mysterious and unresolved, and our emotions reach no catharsis. — Damon Galgut

The fundamental response to change is not logical, but emotional. — Tom DeMarco

The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important. Those so-called rational assumptions flow from this initial impossible situation. Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event placed not at the beginning of the universe but at its end. This seems a more logical position than that of science. If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void. — Terence McKenna

Worst of all, there is no sign of any relaxation of antisemitism. Logically it has nothing to do with Fascism. But the human raceis imitative rather than logical; and as Fascism spreads antisemitism spreads. — George Bernard Shaw

I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to another r)The dogma is therefore a philosopher's myth. — Anonymous

My mind was spinning from the symmetry of this equation I suddenly faced: magical on one side, scientific on the other, a dark pulsing myth and an acceptable reality ... The explanations were like two sides of the same coin, and the side that I favored revealed something essential about the person I was. Prior to investigating Ashley, with little hesitation I'd have believed the side most others would, the side that was logical, rational, exact. But now, much to my own shock, like a man who suddenly realized he was no longer a person he recognized, that other impossible, illogical, mad side still had a very firm grip on me. — Marisha Pessl

It remains to mention some of the ways in which people have spoken misleadingly of logical form. One of the commonest of these is to talk of 'the logical form' of a statement; as if a statement could never have more than one kind of formal power; as if statements could, in respect of their formal powers, be grouped in mutually exclusive classes, like animals at a zoo in respect of their species. But to say that a statement is of some one logical form is simply to point to a certain general class of, e.g., valid inferences, in which the statement can play a certain role. It is not to exclude the possibility of there being other general classes of valid inferences in which the statement can play a certain role — Peter Frederick Strawson

The failure of art is, as we have said, not a complete failure. Substantial truth is revealed to us, we are not cheated of that; but it is revealed only in the equivocal form of beauty, submerged, so to speak, in the flood of aesthetic emotion. It is only because truth is revealed in it that the emotion is aesthetic; but emotional truth, truth in the guise of beauty, is not truth at all in the formal sense Art asserts nothing; and truth as such is matter of assertion. To be itself, it demands logical form. Art fails us because it does not assert. It is pregnant with a message that it cannot deliver. To — R.G. Collingwood

The key to good worldbuilding is leaving out most of what you create. You, as the author, had damn well better know the where all that dragon food comes from, but that doesn't mean that I, as a reader, want to read a five thousand word essay about you explaining it to me. I don't need to see the math, but I can tell by the details you provide whether or not you've thought these things through to their logical conclusions. — Patrick Rothfuss

I think we have a free will, and at the same moment we don't. We have to live with that. It doesn't make sense intellectually, but that's because our intellect is always trying to come up with a logical, rational explanation for things. To do that, it puts labels on things. But once you label something, you've got twoness. You've got the label, and you've got what you're labeling. And there is only oneness in the universe, even though we artificially believe in twoness. — Wayne Dyer

Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down ... There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical. — Albert Camus

Emotion is not a defect in an otherwise perfect reasoning machine. Reason, unfettered from human feeling, has led to as many horrors as any crusader's zeal. What use is pity in a world devoted to maximizing efficiency and productivity? Scientific husbandry tells us to weed out the sick, the infirm, the weak. The ruthless efficiency of euthanasia initiatives and ethnic cleansing are but the programmatic application of Nietzsche's point: from any quantifiable cost-benefit analysis, the principles of animal husbandry should apply to the human race. Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that strict obedience to "hard reason" rather than sympathy for fellow humans would represent a sacrifice of "the noblest part of our nature."6 It is the human heart resonating with empathy, not the logical brain attuned to the mathematics of efficiency, that revolts at cruelty and inhumanity. In — Terryl L. Givens

Professionally, it would be a logical choice, but my personal view is that he is the most insincere man I know in football — Tony Cascarino

Our guns go from safe to single shot to full auto, which is nice and linear and logical, but they (Russians) knew that would mean ninety-nine times in a hundred their guys would panic and ram the selector all the way home, and thereby fire off a whole magazine on the first hasty and unaimed shot. Which would leave them with an empty weapon right at the start of a firefight. Which is not helpful. So the AK selector goes safe, then full auto, then single shot. Not linear, not logical, but certainly practical. Single shot is a kind of default setting, and full auto is a deliberate choice. — Lee Child

By what logical principle should the relief of death be granted only the terminally ill? Such a restriction is itself perverse. After all, the terminally ill face only a brief period of suffering. The chronically ill, or the healthy but bereft - they face a lifetime of agony. Why deny them the relief of a humane exit? — Charles Krauthammer

Quantum mechanics says that it is completely correct to say that the universe's
evolution is determined not by how it started in the Big Bang, but by the final
state of the universe. Every stage of universal history, including every stage of logical and human history, is determined by the ultimate goal of the universe. And
if I am correct that the universal final state is indeed God, then every stage of universal
history, in particular every mutation that has ever occurred, or ever will occur
in any living being, is determined by the action of God. — Frank J. Tipler

But men are not content merely desire; they like to have a logical or pseudo-logical justification for their desires; they like to believe that when they want something, it is not merely for their own personal advantage, but that their desires are dictated by pure reason, by nature, by God Himself. — Aldous Huxley

I do not mean that there is anything intellectually contemptible in being formally "godless"
that is, in rejecting all religious dogmas and in refusing to believe in the God those dogmas describe.
One might very well conclude, for instance, that the world contains far too much misery for the pious idea of a good, loving, and just God to be taken very seriously, and that any alleged creator of the universe in which children suffer and die hardly deserves our devotion.
It is an affective
not a strictly logical
position to hold, but it is an intelligible one, with a certain sublime moral purity to it; I myself find it deeply compelling; and it is entirely up to each person to judge whether he or she finds any particular religion's answer to the "problem of evil" either adequate or credible. — David Bentley Hart

The only logical meaning of necessity seems to be derived from implication. A proposition is more or less necessary according as the class of propositions for which it is a premiss is greater or smaller.* In this sense the propositions of logic have the greatest necessity, and those of geometry have a high degree of necessity. But this sense of necessity yields no valid argument from our inability to imagine holes in space to the conclusion that there cannot really be any space at all except in our imaginations. — Bertrand Russell

The world was opening up to Apple bit by bit, and vice versa. The iPod was Apple's first mass-market consumer device, but it had come about because Steve and his team had taken one logical step after another: first iMovie, then a correction leading to iTunes, then the iPod. Steve's patience, discipline, and vision had set Apple on a new course, one that was more complicated than its old path, which had simply involved the regular improvement of personal computers. — Brent Schlender

I was a litigation lawyer. That's all very logical. Become a litigation lawyer. Become successful. Have a nice office. But there was some pull inside of me saying, self-publish this book. I followed that intuition and it's been a great choice for me in my life. — Robin S. Sharma

Most reject the more repugnant or indefensible dogmas while still holding onto some core belief. Many believers will proudly describe themselves as "reasonable" or "rational" based on how little of their religion they still embrace versus how much they now reject. I think it's funny when people realize that the less you believe the more reasonable you are, but they stop before they reach the logical conclusion. — Aron Ra

What would she tell me, about the Commander, if she were here? Probably she'd disapprove. She disapproved of Luke, back then. Not of Luke but of the fact that he was married. She said I was poaching, on another woman's ground. I said Luke wasn't a fish or a piece of dirt either, he was a human being and could make his own decisions. She said I was rationalizing. I said I was in love. She said that was no excuse. Moira was always more logical than I am. I said she didn't have that problem herself anymore, since she'd decided to prefer women, and as far as I could see she had no scruples about stealing them or borrowing them when she felt like it. She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said "even Steven" was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated I was living with my head in the sand. We — Margaret Atwood

The sum of the knowable, that soil which the human spirit must till, lies between all the languages and independent of them, at their center. But man cannot approach this purely objective realm other than through his own modes of cognition and feeling, in other words: subjectively. Just where study and research touch the highest and deepest point, just there does the mechanical, logical use of reason - whatever in us can most easily be separated from our uniqueness as individual human beings - find itself at the end of its rope. From here on we need a process of inner perception and creation. And all that we can plainly know about this is its result, namely, that objective truth always rises from the entire energy of subjective individuality. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Why does Jesus regard the Father and himself as the best model for all humans? Because neither the Father nor the Son desires greedily, egotistically. God "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends his rain on the just and on the unjust." God gives to us without counting, without marking the least difference between us. He lets the weeds grow with the wheat until the time of harvest. If we imitate the detached generosity of God, then the trap of mimetic rivalries will never close over us. This is why Jesus says also, "Ask, and it will be given to you ... " When Jesus declares that he does not abolish the Law but fulfills it, he articulates a logical consequence of his teaching. The goal of the Law is peace among humankind. Jesus never scorns the Law, even when it takes the form of prohibitions. Unlike modern thinkers, he knows quite well that to avoid conflicts, it is necessary to begin with prohibitions. — Rene Girard

What is art? ... From a strictly logical point of view, a question with no clear answer comes under the suspicion of being meaningless. But a strictly logical point of view never shows us much about art ... — Carter Ratcliff

I find it ironic and unfortunately because people are very vulnerable to populism now these days because they are desperate, we had really difficult times and we had difficult decisions to make. It is natural and it is logical to have people trying to not to vote for Syriza but to vote against the big parties that were in the Government for the last decade. So it is something that you can explain that way. — Eva Kaili

Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can't leak your hidden intentions if you don't think they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others. But the truth is useful, so it should be registered somewhere in the mind, walled off from the parts that interact with other people. — Steven Pinker

This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "conciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him ... but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. — Hunter S. Thompson

Things may not be logical or fair, but when God is directing the events of our lives, they are right. — Luci Swindoll

We are to allow one thing to be really and truly distinct from the other, to be its own genuine self. There is a logical and philosophical urge in thinking men to reduce all things to a single unity. But this urge of the natural reason tends to petrify the heart. There is no single essence to which all existing things belong, no single essence which makes all things basically one. The only true unity of created things is the unity created by love. The heart embraces all things in their great variety and the heart loves them all. — Arnold Albert Van Ruler

The side effects of growing up 'just outside of [insert major urban center here] are many but practically intangible. This is logical given the fact that suburbia itself is a side effect and practically intangible. — Sloane Crosley

But a question needs to be asked, a basic logical scientific question. It is simply this, has anyone applied Ockham's Razor to the question yet? — Leviak B. Kelly

I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100,000, that means 100,000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical, but it didn't turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100,000, four of them were interested in my book. — Steve Martin

Design may be the logical solution to a problem, but it's never a formula. Design grows out of clarity of purpose. — Millard Sheets

Not that I'm not keen to talk to him. I am
in the fantasy version of tonight, anyway, in which I actually manage to string words into sentences, and not just random magnetic-poetry sentences, but sentences that don't lead to the logical conclusion that I have brain damage. — Laini Taylor

The only way to wrest yourself from Bad Luck's grip is to act. Not randomly, but with logical purpose. And if you were wrong, you backed up and re- A person can't sit on their ass and wait for Good Luck to walk by.reasoned. Chance still overrode your efforts, but what other way did you have to combat chaos? — Lily Gardner