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"You can't skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! That's the easiest solution to the problem!"
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"Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion - thus:Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; Therefore-Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.This may be called syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed."

"It had to be a trick or you couldn't have done it."

"Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally and if they would contribute mutually to each others' welfare.This world is not a vale of sorrows if you will recognize discriminatingly what is truly excellent in it; and if you will avail yourself of it for mutual happiness and well-being. Therefore, let us explain as often as possible, and particularly at the departure of life, that we base our faith on firm foundations, on Truth for putting into action our ideas which do not depend on fables and ideas which Science has long ago proven to be false."

"You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination."A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting."You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right."

"There's more to logic than identifying logical fallacies."

"Many people have said to me that I'm a mystic. I find that a bit mysterious. I just use logic and common sense for my philosophies."

"Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of 'knack' or some kind of 'affinity for machines' in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a 'short between the earphones,' failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself."
Explore more quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught."

"And, beginning to grind his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovich admitted that he'd been a fool--but only to himself, of course."

"His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, usolved doubt. He is one of those who doesn't want millions, but an answer to their questions."

"The criminal who revolted against society hates it, and considers himself in the right; society was wrong, not he. Has he not, moreover, undergone his punishment? Accordingly he is absolved, acquitted in his own eyes. In spite of different opinions, everyone will acknowledge that there are acts which everywhere and always, under no matter what legal system, are beyond doubt criminal, and should be regarded as long as man is man."

"Indeed, in that sense we're all rather often almost like mad people, only with the slight difference that the 'sick' are somewhat madder than we are, so that it's necessary to draw a line here."

"If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment-still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I've drunk it all!"

"...everything defiled and degraded. What cannot man live through! Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him."

"Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic."
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