Logical Fallacy Quotes

“The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to 'one-upping' his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no wisdom in it.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“most of us happily disavow fairies, astrology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, without first immersing ourselves in books of Pastafarian theology etc.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“I love objectivity when mine.”
― Brian Spellman, Cartoonist's Book Camp

“Natural selection is not only a parsimonious, plausible and elegant solution; it is the only workable alternative to chance that has ever been suggested. Intelligent design suffers from exactly the same objection as chance. It is simply not a plausible solution to the riddle of statistical improbability. And the higher the improbability, the more implausible intelligent design becomes. Seen clearly, intelligent design will turn out to be a redoubling of the problem. Once again, this is because the designer himself (/herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin. Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman's Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman's Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“It would appear to a quoting dilettante—i.e., one of those writers and scholars who fill up their texts with phrases from some dead authority—that, as phrased by Hobbes, “from like antecedents flow like consequents.” Those who believe in the unconditional benefits of past experience should consider this pearl of wisdom allegedly voiced by a famous ship’s captain:

"But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort." E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS

Titanic Captain Smith’s ship sank in 1912 in what became the most talked-about shipwreck in history.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion ... Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity ... Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Many people confuse the statement “almost all terrorists are Moslems” with “almost all Moslems are terrorists.” Assume that the first statement is true, that 99 percent of terrorists are Moslems. This would mean that only about .001 percent of Moslems are terrorists, since there are more than one billion Moslems and only, say, ten thousand terrorists, one in a hundred thousand. So the logical mistake makes you (unconsciously) overestimate the odds of a randomly drawn individual Moslem person (between the age of, say, fifteen and fifty) being a terrorist by close to fifty thousand times!

[...]Our inferential machinery, that which we use in daily life, is not made for a complicated environment in which a statement changes markedly when its wording is slightly modified. Consider that in a primitive environment there is no consequential difference between the statements "most killers are wild animals" and "most wild animals are killers". There is an error here, but it is almost inconsequential. Our statistical intuitions have not evolved for a habitat in which these subtleties can make a big difference.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any step will have no impact on the macro level.”
― Brian Clevinger, 8-Bit Theater

“One who learns to justify forgets to learn.”
― Raheel Farooq, Kalam

“memories of emotional events are stamped on running water”
― Aristotle

“In 1867, George Campbell, Duke of Argyll, had published The Reign of Law, a book that Darwin found deeply annoying. A supporter of Richard Owen, Campbell argued that while evolution (or "Development") might be observable in the fossil record, it was merely evidence of God's purpose. God, for example, would cause horses and oxen to evolve in time to meet human needs. The brightly colored plumage of birds, Campbell went on, were simply God's decorations of nature for humanity's enjoyment.”
― Jonathan Clements, Darwin's Notebook: The Life, Times, and Discoveries of Charles Robert Darwin

“The human mind – a product of the brain – controls our ability to adapt to a hostile or friendly environment. Human beings are composed of fields of energy, some of which forces are positive, and other force fields are negative. We can use constructive reason to penetrate only a limited segment of the human mind, which projects discernible logical thought process. A person’s mind also houses dark areas of reality, the mysterious apparatus that eludes the grasp of human reason. We can never express the truth of a person with a precise lucid principle. A person must travel beyond realism in order to explore every facet of his or her being and live his or her most cherished dreams.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Applying logic to potentially illogical behaviour is to construct a house on shifting foundations. The structure will inevitably collapse.”
― Stewart Stafford

“It is not truth that is validated by a proof, but one’s understanding of it.”
― Raheel Farooq, Why I Am a Muslim: And a Christian and a Jew

“The first group fails because their logic is their own; the second fails because logic is all they own.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Just because a behavior is "natural" does not make it good. Arsenic is a natural component of mineral water, but that does not make it something you want to drink.”
― Ptera Hunter, The Wisdom of Loki: The Art of Lying in the Natural World

“De Bono argues that the West's tradition of settling disagreement by debate or argument is an example of overreliance on logic.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“Texas sharpshooter fallacy: Imagine that you are driving down a country road in Texas. You see a barn that has six targets painted on it, and a bullet hole at the very center of each target. “Yes sir,” says the owner of the barn, “I never miss.” “That’s right,” says his spouse, “there ain’t a man in the state of Texas who’s more accurate with a paint brush.” Got it? He fired the six shots, and then painted the targets around them.”
― John V. Guttag, Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python: With Application to Understanding Data

“Nothing in this world is illogical.
What might seem as illogic to one, is doctrine to another.
Through experiences, logic is formed and that
logic influences prospective experiences
until disbanded.”
― S.F. Toabeah, Dangling

“Every day a jailor brought the prisoners their food, and as he laid down the dishes he would say a word to them. If their meal was flesh he would remind them that they were eating corpses, or give them some account of the slaughtering: or, if it was the inwards of some beast, he would read them a lecture in anatomy and show the likeness of the mess to the same parts in themselves—which was the more easily done because the giant’s eyes were always staring into the dungeon at dinner time. Or if the meal were eggs he would recall to them that they were eating the menstruum of a verminous fowl, and crack a few jokes with the female prisoners. So he went on day by day. Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them, and the jailor said as he put down the pipkin:
‘Our relations with the cow are not delicate—as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.’

Now John had been in the pit a shorter time than any of the others: and at these words something seemed to snap in his head and he gave a great sigh and suddenly spoke out in a loud, clear voice: ‘Thank heaven! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense.’

‘What do you mean?’ said the jailor, wheeling round upon him.

‘You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.’

‘And pray, what difference is there except by custom?’

‘Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?’

‘So Nature is a person, then, with purposes and consciousness,’ said the jailor with a sneer. ‘In fact, a Landlady. No doubt it comforts you to imagine you can believe that sort of thing;’ and he turned to leave the prison with his nose in the air.

‘I know nothing about that,’ shouted John after him. ‘I am talking of what happens. Milk does feed calves and dung does not.”
― CS Lewis

“ইন্টারনেটে একটি ছবি আছে যেখানে ১ম জন দেখেন 6 [৬], ২য় জন বিপরীত দিক থেকে সেই একই সংখ্যাকে দেখেন 9 [৯]! কে সঠিক? ঐ ছবিটিতে লেখা “Just because you’re right doesn’t mean I’m wrong” এই শব্দগুলো বোঝায় যে উভয়ই সঠিক। কিন্তু, আমি দ্বিমত পোষণ করি! এটি একটি ভ্রান্ত যুক্তি বা ভুল। ইংরেজিতে 6 দেখতে 9 এর মতো কিন্তু 9 না। তবে, ইংরেজিতে 0 [শুন্য] এবং 8 [আট] উভয় দিক থেকেই একই দেখায়। এটি 6 নাকি 9 তা নির্ভর করছে লেখকের উপর। আমি যদি কাগজে 6 লিখি, তাহলে সত্য হচ্ছে যে আমি প্রথমে 6 লিখেছি। এটিকে আমি অস্বীকার করতে পারবো না। যদি আমি মিথ্যে বলি যে আমি 9 লিখেছি, তবুও আমার মন জানে যে আমি 6 লিখেছি। সুতরাং, 6-ই সত্য থাকে। একইভাবে, আমি একজন মুসলিম হিসেবে এটি সত্য বলে বিশ্বাস করি স্রষ্টা ১ জন, অন্য ধর্মের কেউ বলেন দেব-দেবী অনেকজন, অন্য কেউ বিশ্বাস করেন স্রষ্টা বলতে কিছুই নেই ইত্যাদি। ঠিক ঐ 6 এবং 9 এর মতো, এ সকল বিশ্বাস একসাথে সত্য হতে পারে না! শুধুমাত্র ১টি সত্য এবং অন্যগুলো মিথ্যা। এটি মহৎ কর্ম যে আমরা সবাই এই সুন্দর পৃথিবীতে ভ্রাতৃত্ববোধ বজায় রেখে যার যার ধর্ম পালনের মাধ্যমে চরম সত্যের অনুসন্ধান করছি!”
― Md. Ziaul Haque

“A line of reasoning does not lead but follows us to truth.”
― Raheel Farooq, Why I Am a Muslim: And a Christian and a Jew

“AIs have their logic, and we have ours, and they noticed our logic can be pretty illogical.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

“Don't forget that computer programming teaches students to think," says a friend of mine who's a computer jock in Silicon valley. He's deeply invested in technology and has no kids. "Programming is a logical system that rewards clear reasoning."
Uh, sure. Nineteenth-century schoolmasters used the same reasoning to justify teaching ancient languages. According to computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, "There is, so far as I know, no more evidence that programming is good for the mind than Latin is.”
― Clifford Stoll, High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian

“A moment ago you were a smart, independent individual and now you claim to be a silly, ignorant pawn. You cannot be both. Make up your mind.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

“Without a reference point, all judgment is madness. All flawed points of reference lead but to errors. Luck wants it that an error in decadence reveals its true face and the examination of its premises is then unavoidable. - On Reference Points”
― Lamine Pearlheart, Awakening

“The purpose of logic is to make sense. If it doesn't make sense, then there is no need to apply logic in that particular situation. If you use it will be absurd.”
― Srikanth Mahankali

“Kebenaran memasuki pikiran yang bebas sesat pikir.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“Even the logician's tools may break if you lean too hard on them.”
― Wilfrid Hodges, Logic: An Introduction to Elementary Logic