Logical Deduction Quotes

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

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

He did not dissociate his thought from himself; he thought integrally, with the whole of his body; and each logical deduction forthwith became real to him - as happens only with very healthy or direct persons who have not yet turned thought into a pastime. ~ Leonid Andreyev

In a well-balanced, reasoning mind there is no such thing as an intuition - an inspired guess! You can guess, of course - and a guess is either right or wrong. If it is right you can call it an intuition. If it is wrong you usually do not speak of it again.
But what is often called an intuition is really impression based on logical deduction or experience. When an expert feels that there is something wrong about a picture or a piece of furniture or the signature on a cheque he is really basing that feeling on a host of a small signs and details. He has no need to go into them minutely - his experience obviates that - the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong. But it is not a guess, it is an impression based on experience. ~ Agatha Christie

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

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

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

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

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

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

... there is a large connection between Saturn and lead. Metals resonate the emotions and moods of people, and so the next logical deduction is that Saturn is close related to anger. ~ Masaru Emoto

Poetry, unlike music, is a meta-art, and relies upon non-physical structures for the production of its effects. In its case, the medium is syntax, grammar and logical continuity, which together form the carrier-wave of plain sense within which its deeper meanings are broadcast. ~ Don Paterson

They're used for logical grouping and convenience mostly. ~ Anonymous

I looked for it but I found no way out of this wild logical thicket. This was a tangle every bit as unknown and terrifying as that behind the Green Wall These were creatures just as extraordinary and incomprehensible, and they said as much with no words. I imagined that I saw through some kind of thick class the square root of minus one-infinitely huge and at the same time infinitely small, scorpion-shaped, with that hidden but always sensed sting of the minus sign... But maybe that is nothing except my "soul," like the legendary scorpion of the ancients, which would deliberately sting itself with everything that... ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

Maybe it's not logical. I don't know. I don't care. I've been asked didnt I think it odd that I should be present to witness the death of everything and I do think it's odd but that doesnt mean it's not so. Someone has to be here. ~ Cormac McCarthy

There is also a psychological phenomenon at work here that I believe is particularly male. A woman or girl
presuming one could be induced to take part in this sort of activity in the first place
having burned her hair and eyebrows would conclude that she had been lucky and reduce the amount of gas she put into the balloon next time. The man doesn't come to the same conclusion at all. He, singed and blackened, arrives at the point of view that he still has a margin of error to play with. After all, he isn't dead, and he's hardly likely to burn his eyebrows off again. They've already gone, history; he's moved on. There can be but one deduction
the dose needs to be increased. ~ Mark Barrowcliffe

Drinking myself blind seemed like the next logical step. ~ Justin Cronin

All we seem to be left with now is paranoid gibberish about a War on Terror whose whole purpose is to expand the War, increase the Terror, and obfuscate the fact that the wars of today are not aberrations but systemic, logical exercises to preserve a way of life whose delicate pleasures and exquisite comforts can only be delivered to the chosen few by a continuous, protracted war for hegemony--Lifestyle Wars. ~ Arundhati Roy

A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound, use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach. ~ Gilbert N. Lewis

The theoretically interesting category-mistakes are those made by people who are perfectly competent to apply concepts, at least in the situations with which they are familiar, but are still liable in their abstract thinking to allocate those concepts to logical types to which they do not belong) ~ Anonymous

Good hitters don't just go up and swing. They always have a plan. Call it an educated deduction. You visualize. You're like a good negotiator. You know what you have, you know what he has, then you try to work it out. ~ Dave Winfield

This is Democratic bedrock: we don't let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying. Here on the frozen tundra of Minnesota, if your neighbor's car won't start, you put on your parka and get the jumper cables out and deliver the Sacred Spark that starts their car. Everybody knows this. The logical extension of this spirit is social welfare and the myriad government programs with long dry names all very uninteresting to you until you suddenly need one ... ~ Garrison Keillor

Everything could come to a crashing end for us if we were caught, but it didn't matter. Right now, being with him seemed worth whatever consequence could come from it. This was right, like it was meant to be. There was no logical explanation for it. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

In Hitler the rare union has taken place between the most acute logical thinker and truly profound philosopher, and the iron man of action ... I follow no leadership but that of Adolf Hitler and of God. ~ Hermann Goring

So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice: (he who is found out is nobody:) for the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice. ~ Plato

Many of my sharpest critics have decided to take a position of ignoring me - because they feel that by attacking me, they would draw attention to my book and give me more publicity and help me sell more books. So I think that they decided that the best thing for them to do is to say nothing. Also, I think that some of my critics simply can't refute my argument - and so it's easier for them to ignore it as well, so that they're not forced to confront the logical contradiction in their own position. ~ Bruce Bartlett

There's a logical reason for everything in the universe even if we cannot comprehend, understand, or express that reason. ~ Jared Alexander

I have faith that men can be as reasonable and logical as women if they but try. ~ Deanna Raybourn

The Client," said the Dean. "The Client. Think of that above all. He's the one to live in the house you build. Your only purpose is to serve him. You must aspire to give the proper artistic expression to his wishes. Isn't that all one can say on the subject?" "Well, I could say that I must aspire to build for my client the most comfortable, the most logical, the most beautiful house that can be built. I could say that I must try to sell him the best I have and also teach him to know the best. I could say it, but I won't. Because I don't intend to build in order to serve or help anyone. I don't intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build. ~ Anonymous

Pacifiers are also blamed for delayed language development, which seems logical, too - how's he going to talk with that thing in his mouth? - but there's no evidence for this either. There is evidence that the lack of evidence hasn't stopped people from making the claim: a British speech therapist even admits she was disappointed her study's data showed no link between pacifiers and speech problems. And teeth? Pacifiers only screw up the palate if used past the age of five, well after the vast majority of children have stopped. ~ Nicholas Day

I can't ever come up with any logical reason why she would want to be with me. I just ... have to trust her judgment. ~ Brandon Sanderson

I'm sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. 'The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life' That sort of thing. It's not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren't. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains. ~ Agatha Christie

Everyone's talking about how no one is buying records any more, but to me it's quite logical. In the 1990s, music was so hardcore-marketed to a certain group of people that I think a lot of kids felt taken advantage of. ~ Robyn

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

Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched - love for instance - we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next. ~ Virginia Woolf

If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber. ~ Flannery O'Connor

The only one of the early investigators who carried the exploration of hysteria to its logical conclusion was Breuer's patient Anna O. After Breuer abandoned her, she apparently remained ill for several years. And then she recovered. The mute hysteric who had invented the "talking cure" found her voice and her sanity, in the women's liberation movement. Under a pseudonym, Paul Berthold, she translated into German the classic treatise by Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and authored a play, Women's Rights. Under her own name, Bertha Papenheim became a prominent feminist social worker, intellectual, and organizer. In the course of a long and fruitful career she directed an orphanage for girls, founded a feminist organization for Jewish women and traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East to campaign against the sexual exploitation of women and children. Her dedication, energy and commitment were legendary. In the words of a colleague, 'A volcano lived in this woman... Her fight against the abuse of women and children was almost a physically felt pain for her.' At her death, the philosopher Martin Buber commemorated her: 'I not only admired her but loved her, and will love her until the day I die. There are people of spirit and there are people of passion, both less common than one might think. Rarer still are the people of spirit and passion. But rarest of all is a passionate spirit. Bertha Pappenheim was a woman with just such a spirit. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

The only logical answer to the question of why Elijah needed to pray is to imply that God has chosen to work through people. Even when it is the Lord himself initiating something, earnestly desiring to do it, He still needs us to ask. ~ Dutch Sheets

The future is being made out of the present, so the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. This is logical and clear. Spending a lot of time speculating and worrying about the future is totally useless. We can only take care of our future by taking care of the present moment, because the future is made out of only one substance: the present. Only if you are anchored in the present can you prepare well for the future. Although ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

The usual way the people are taught to think in amerika is that each subject is in a little compartment and has no relation to any other subject. For the most part, we receive fragments of unrelated knowledge, and our education follows no logical format or pattern. It is exactly this kind of education that produces people who don't have the ability to think for themselves and who are easily manipulated. ~ Assata Shakur

There is something precious in our being mysteries to ourselves, in our being unable ever to see through even the person who is closest to our heart and to reckon with him as though he were a logical proposition or a problem in accounting. ~ Rudolf Bultmann

The pathbreaker who disdains the applause he may get from the crowd of his contemporaries does not depend on his own age's ideas. He is free to say with Schillers Marquis Posa: "This century is not ripe for my ideas; I live as a citizen of centuries to come." The genius' work too is embedded in the sequence of historical events, is conditioned by the achievements of preceding generations, and is merely a chapter in the evolution of ideas. But it adds something new and unheard of to the treasure of thoughts and may in this sense be called creative. The genuine history of mankind is the history of ideas. It is ideas that distinguish man from ali other beings. Ideas engender social institutions, political changes, technological methods of production, and ali that is called economic conditions. And in searching for their origin we inevitably come to a point at which ali that can be asserted is that a man had an idea. Whether the name of this man is known or not is of secondary importance.
This is the meaning that history attaches to the notion of individuality. Ideas are the ultimate given of historical inquiry. Ali that can be said about ideas is that they carne to pass. The historian may point out how a new idea fitted into the ideas developed by earlier generations and how it may be considered a continuation of these ideas and their logical sequei. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

She didn't take it well, I guess," Jasper said. "Hard to deliver that kind of news."
"No ... no, you don't understand. But then you haven't met her." Slowly Rule looked up, relief blooming inside. He felt like he had as a small child, waking from some terrible nightmare to find his father's hand on his shoulder. The sudden bone-deep reassurance wasn't logical, wasn't reasonable. But it was real. "It's okay. It's good. Grandmother is coming. ~ Eileen Wilks

Nor during the Age of Innovation have the poor gotten poorer, as people are always saying. On the contrary, the poor have been the chief beneficiaries of modern capitalism. It is an irrefutable historical finding, obscured by the logical truth that the profits from innovation go in the first act mostly to the bourgeois rich. ~ Deirdre N. McCloskey