Logical Deduction Quotes & Sayings

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms. — Albert Einstein

One of the grave dangers inherent in the various stages of any theatrical career-whether it be budding, quiescent or diminishing-is the advice of friends. — Moss Hart

All but a prophetic few must go about God's work in very quiet, very unspectacular ways. And as you labor to know Him, and to know that He knows you; as you invest your time
and your convenience
in quiet, unassuming service, you will indeed find that "He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up" (Matthew 4:6). — Jeffrey R. Holland

We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill ... it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress. — Li Ka-shing

Here is the tragedy of theology in its distilled essence: The employment of high-powered human intellect, of genius, of profoundly rigorous logical deduction - studying nothing. In the Middle Ages, the great minds capable of transforming the world did not study the world; and so, for most of a millennium, as human beings screamed in agony - decaying from starvation, eaten by leprosy and plague, dying in droves in their twenties - the men of the mind, who could have provided their earthly salvation, abandoned them for otherworldly fantasies. — Andrew Bernstein

Lacking the direct test of success or failure, the voter tends to turn, not to those politicians whose measures have the best chance of success, but to those with the ability to 'sell' their propaganda. Without grasping logical chains of deduction, the average voter will never be able to discover the error that the ruler makes. — Murray Rothbard

Science, in its ultimate ideal, consists of a set of propositions arranged in a hierarchy, the lowest level of the hierarchy being concerned with particular facts, and the highest with some general law, governing everything in the universe. The various levels in the hierarchy have a two-fold logical connection, travelling one up, one down; the upward connection proceeds by induction, the downward by deduction. — Bertrand Russell

A man cannot please long who has only one kind of wit. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It's a matter of balance between deduction and induction - between reason and empiricism - and in 1620 the English philosopher Francis Bacon published his Novum Organum, or "new instrument," which described science as a blend of sensory data and reasoned theory. Ideally, Bacon argued, one should begin with observations, then formulate a general theory from which logical predictions can be made, then check the predictions against experiment.37 If you don't give yourself a reality check you end up with half-baked (and often fully baked) ideas, — Michael Shermer

As the years go by, it's our relationships that will leave us the best memories to celebrate endlessly. — Wes Adamson

I always got nervous the nights we played in the World Series. First pitch, I was nervous. Then after that, forget it; I'd start playing. — Yogi Berra

In one of the earlier Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Arthur Conan Doyle (not yet a Sir) made an observation on logical deduction. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
There is, however, a specific flaw in that maxim. It assumes people can recognize the difference between what is impossible and what they believe is impossible. — Peter Clines

There was something dead in my heart.
I tried to figure out what it was by the strength of the smell. I knew that it was not a lion or a sheep or a dog. Using logical deduction, I came to the conclusion that it was a mouse.
I had a dead mouse in my heart. — Richard Brautigan

Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling. — Ambrose Bierce

My first encounters with faith came about the time I was a Boy Scout, at about 14 or 15. I made the logical deduction that they operate the same way; I treated my faith like earning a merit badge, and everything about Christianity was about earning merit badges. — Max Lucado

I presume that few who have paid any attention to the history of the Mathematical Analysis, will doubt that it has been developed in a certain order, or that that order has been, to a great extent, necessary
being determined, either by steps of logical deduction, or by the successive introduction of new ideas and conceptions, when the time for their evolution had arrived. — George Boole

The world is not ready for some people when they show up, but that shouldn't stop anyone. — Ashly Lorenzana

Intellect begins with the observation of nature, proceeds to memorize and classify the facts thus observed, and by logical deduction builds up that edifice of knowledge properly called science... But admittedly we also know by feeling, and we can combine the two faculties, and present knowledge in the guise of art. — Herbert Read

The sensible man,' Crow had said (to Sherlock Holmes), 'don't look to confirm what he already knows -- he looks to deny it. Finding evidence that backs up your theories ain't useful, but finding evidence that your theories are wrong is priceless. Never try to prove yourself right -- always try to prove yourself wrong instead. — Andy Lane

Logical reasoning may be a most convenient means of mental communication for covering short distances, but the curvature of the earth, alas, is reflected even in logic: an ideally rational progression of thought will finally bring you back to the point of departure where you return aware of the simplicity of genius, with a delightful sensation that you have embraced truth, while actually you have merely embraced your own self ... anything you might term a deduction already exposes the flaw: logical development inexorably becomes an envelopment. — Vladimir Nabokov

The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them. — Albert Einstein

There is nothing distinctively scientific about the hypothetico-deductive process. It is not even distinctively intellectual. It is merely a scientific context for a much more general stratagem that underlies almost all regulative processes or processes of continuous control, namely feedback, the control of performance by the consequences of the act performed. In the hypothetico-deductive scheme the inferences we draw from a hypothesis are, in a sense, its logical output. If they are true, the hypothesis need not be altered, but correction is obligatory if they are false. The continuous feedback from inference to hypothesis is implicit in Whewell's account of scientific method; he would not have dissented from the view that scientific behaviour can be classified as appropriately under cybernetics as under logic. — Peter Medawar

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

It doesn't take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, we rarely get. — Jodi Picoult

For a while, I decided to worship God. It was a God I arrived at through a method of logical deduction. If there is a God, what would he be like? I asked. He would be a real person in my life, I reasoned, adhering to a literally anthropomorphic view of the sacred. He would be beautiful and I would desire him. Since a friend of mine named Trevor had all those attributes, I concluded that Trev was God. Having settled on him, I then further deduced God's other characteristics from Trevor's behaviour. He was narcissistic, perplexed, rather dispassionate, flawed in various ways, etc. So was God. At night I prayed to him by name. My entreaties seemed about as effective as other people's prayers to their Gods. And with Trevor there was the added advantage that if my prayers failed to reach him, I could always phone. — Stan Persky

Virtue does not come from wealth, but ... wealth, and every other good thing which men have ... comes from virtue. — Socrates

But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile. — Nikola Tesla

He did not arrive at this conclusion by the decent process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process halfway between the two by which one usually gets to know things. — Margery Allingham

The same amazing blush he had seen once — Jack London

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

If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important rule of beauty, which is: who cares? — Tina Fey