Logical Ideas Quotes & Sayings

It takes a very great intelligence to breathe logical meaning into meaningless ideas. — Milan Kundera

In what touches their social convictions, most persons do not think. The threat of change, with all it suggests to them in the loss of social and economic privilege, alarms so deeply that they are incapable of unprejudiced thought. They seem to themselves to be thinking, with lucidity and fairness, but since they start from the conviction that change must undoubtedly be for the worse or from settled grief at the thought of losing what is old and lovely, they are doing no more than following a logical sequence of ideas from a false premise. — Storm Jameson

The idea comes before the logical argument. — Gerald Abrahams

With the exception of buying a big rig and becoming cross-country truck drivers, most of Jerry and Ben's ideas for a business involved food. They both liked to eat, so it seemed like a logical career move. — Fred Lager

We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion. — Anne Sullivan

Even in ordinary conversation, the ideas connected with the word Logic include at least precision of language, and accuracy of classification: and we perhaps oftener hear persons speak of a logical arrangement, or of expressions logically defined, than of conclusions logically deduced from premises. — John Stuart Mill

An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

As a citizen I felt appalled that we WENT TO WAR over faulty information - that felt false or at least "stretched" from the first time they started to push the idea that Iraq and 9/11 were connected, though they didn't seem to be and there was no logical reason for thinking they were. It's like your neighbors the Smiths burned your house down, and then the next day you retaliated by burning down the Jones' house. — Christopher Durang

Lord Bacon said, "Writing makes an exact man." He spoke the truth. Writing produces exactitude by forcing you to set down ideas in logical relation to one another. Writing crystallizes your thoughts and makes your ideas specific. — John Haggai

Whether we like it or not, if we are to pursue a career in science, eventually we have to learn the "language of nature": mathematics. Without mathematics, we can only be passive observers to the dance of nature rather than active participants. As Einstein once said, "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." Let me offer an analogy. One may love French civilization and literature, but to truly understand the French mind, one must learn the French language and how to conjugate French verbs. The same is true of science and mathematics. Galileo once wrote, "[The universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to understand a single word. — Michio Kaku

Before he (Francis Bacon) came along, people conducted all their arguments through a series of logical fallacies or simply shouting louder than the other guy, or, if they did use facts, they only selected ones that reinforced their prejudices and advanced their ideas." Oberon replies "don't they still do that? — Kevin Hearne

Some people are aware of another sort of thinking which ... leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of ... the term 'lateral thinking' has been coined to describe this orther sort of thinking; 'vertical thinking' is used to denote the conventional logical process. — Edward De Bono

The greenhouse crisis is the bill coming due for the Industrial Revolution. It's not an accident. It's the logical outcome of our world view - the idea that we can control the forces of nature, that we can have short-term expedient gains without paying for them, that there are no limits to exploitation of the environment, that we can produce and consume faster than nature's ability to replenish. — Jeremy Rifkin

The theoretical idea ... does not arise apart from and independent of experience; nor can it be derived from experience by a purely logical procedure. It is produced by a creative act. Once a theoretical idea has been acquired, one does well to hold fast to it until it leads to an untenable conclusion. — Albert Einstein

I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [ ... ] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way. — Rasmus Lerdorf

Novel ideas are unsettling, innovative concepts about important matters in human affairs is disruptive of the internal harmony that people prefer. There is a tendency even for the most logical and classically educated people steeped in rational scholastic traditions to assume that if any new hypothesis were correct, a scholar would already written it in a book. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I don't think my playing style has really changed over the years; it's just gotten better. I can hear the improvement in comparing older records and later records. I'm referring to soloing ability, to having a better sound, to knowing chords better, and getting rhythmically stronger. It also has to do with ideas - learning how to edit your ideas and being better able to follow ideas out to a logical conclusion. — Gary Bartz

When you're stressed out or nervous, the logical side of your brain goes out the window and you have no idea what's happening. But, that is a lot of fun. It feels like you are an action hero. — Katia Winter

I always say the first sign of a good idea is a lot of people not believing in it. I can tell you this right now, if you have an idea that makes complete logical sense and people don't believe in it, then you probably have a brilliant idea. — Steve Stoute

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

We often hear what seem to be great ideas capable of transforming the world. But they are mere words devoid of emotion, empty of Love, which is why they do not touch us, however logical and intelligent they may seem. — Paulo Coelho

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

They always believe that 'things are in a bad way now,' but they 'haven't any faith in these idealists.' One minute they call Wilson 'just a dreamer, not practical'- a year later they rail at him for making his dreams realities. They haven't clear logical ideas on one single subject except a sturdy, stolid opposition to all change. They don't think uneducated people should be highly paid, but they won't see that if they don't pay the uneducated people their children are going to be uneducated too, and we're going round and round in a circle. That- is the great middle class. — F Scott Fitzgerald

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live - that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Religion: A lot of fanciful ideas inspired by wishful thinking. Science: A lot of logical ideas based on the best evidence available. Which should we have faith in? — David Alan Harvey

A lot of great thinkers- like Einstein and Newton- come up with their best ideas when they're young because they don't yet think in the way that the establishment teaches them. Sometimes your lack of knowledge frees your mind to be creative and think in a different way. But you still have to be logical and figure out a practical way to get things done, even though you're looking at things differently. — George Lucas

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. — Albert Einstein

Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply ingrained attitudes of aversion and preference. — John Dewey

In one of Plato's seminars a young man with a rural accent stood up one day and said Plato's philosophy was nonsense. You can have ideas that are neither real nor permanent. They can be mere fleeting fantasies. Plato evicted the student, whose name was Aristotle. Unlike Plato, Aristotle was not one of the gilded youth of Athenian society. His social background was solid middle class. But such was the encyclopedic knowledge he came to exhibit, and his skill in logical argument, that in time Aristotle gained rich benefactors, including the king of Macedonia who hired Aristotle to tutor his young son, later known as Alexander the Great. — Norman F. Cantor

When you travel around the country, you see what a tough town New York is: rude, competitive, a town where good, logical ideas are ignored in favor of unworkable ones. And yet, all these other towns are so dead and boring compared to New York. — Woody Allen

I like good ideas. I don't want just do something for it's own sake to bother people, but if I can bother them with a logical argument about something they have agreed to in society simplistically - like children are sacred, the cult of the child, this cult of professional parenthood, and of course religion, and respect for policemen and the law, and all of these untouchable areas. I like attacking those beliefs, but in with good sound thinking, and an unusual approach. — George Carlin

I never know what my next move will be in Hollywood. It's such an unpredictable town. People get jaded and lost and I've been able to stay a float. I think the next logical step in my career would be to start my own filmmaking empire like (Harvey Weinstein) and (Bob Weinstein) did so many years ago. I think if only the unions weren't so strict in Boston, I'd set up shop there and make films of a certain quality you don't see represented these days. I'm full of ideas and dreams. — Ben Affleck

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. — Edward L. Bernays

I want you to observe ... that those who cry the loudest about their disillusionment, about the failure of virtue, the futility of reason, the impotence of logic - are those who have achieved the full, exact, logical result of the ideas they preached, so mercilessly logical that they dare not identify it. — Ayn Rand

Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme. — Charles Hartshorne

"No one is doing what we're doing." This is a bummer of a lie because there are only two logical conclusions. First, no one else is doing this because there is no market for it. Second, the entrepreneur is so clueless that he can't even use Google to figure out he has competition. Suffice it to say that the lack of a market and cluelessness is not conducive to securing an investment. As a rule of thumb, if you have a good idea, five companies are going the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing. — Guy Kawasaki

Every valuable creative idea must always be logical in hindsight. If it were not, we would never be able to see its value. — Edward De Bono

How could you,' Mackey asked, 'how could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof. . . how could you believe that extra terrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world? How could you . . .?' "Nash looked up at last and fixed Mackey with an unblinking stare as cool and dispassionate as that of any bird or snake. 'Because,' Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, as if talking to himself,'the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously. — Sylvia Nasar