A Quote by Ambrose Bierce

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.

Ambrose Bierce

Quote Topics

Art Basic Blessed Certainty Combining Conclusion Dig Double Hole Hole In One Human Limitations Logic Major Man Mathematics May Men Minor Misunderstanding Obtain One Man Piece Post Premise Quickly Reasoning Second Seconds Sixty Strict Therefore Thinking Thus Times Twice Which Work

Quote Author

Ambrose Bierce
American - Journalist
June 24, 1842 - 1914

For every criminal case, the judge must construct a perfect syllogism: the major premise must be the general law; the minor premise, whether or not the action in question is in compliance with the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment.

Cesare Beccaria

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

Ambrose Bierce

For every crime that comes before him, a judge is required to complete a perfect syllogism in which the major premise must be the general law; the minor, the action that conforms or does not conform to the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment. If the judge were constrained, or if he desired to frame even a single additional syllogism, the door would thereby be opened to uncertainty.

Cesare Beccaria

SYLLOGISM, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor assumption and an inconsequent.

Ambrose Bierce

The test is the sixty seconds of every minute, and the sixty minutes of every hour, not our times of prayer and devotional meetings.

Oswald Chambers

Sixty-five seconds," he said. "You weren't breathing for sixty-five seconds after we found you. I lived and died during each one of them." He let out a breath. "Never again.

Jill Shalvis

No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. ... Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; ... [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. ... A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.

G. H. Hardy

Slavery in America was perpetuated not merely by human badness but also by human blindness. ... Men convinced themselves that a system that was so economically profitable must be morally justifiable. ... Science was commandeered to prove the biological inferiority of the Negro. Even philosophical logic was manipulated [exemplified by] an Aristotlian syllogism: All men are made in the image of God; God, as everyone knows, is not a Negro; Therefore, the Negro is not a man.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are certain things in this world we all have in common such as time. Everybody has sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour, twenty-four hours to a day. The difference is what we do with that time and how we use it.

Lou Holtz

Everything has a purpose or premise. Every second of our life has its own premise, whether or not we are conscious of it at the time. That premise may be as simple as breathing or as complex as a vital emotional decision, but it is always there.

Lajos Egri

But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.

James Branch Cabell

A sixty - eight, he wants you to go down on him but he won't return the favor. It would be sixty-nine but he owes you one.

Lisa Kleypas

The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all.

Leo Tolstoy

If the world had two gods, it would surely go to ruin-this is the first premise. Now it is known that it has not gone to ruin-this is the second premise. From these premises the conclusion must of necessity follow, that is, the denial of two gods.

Al-Ghazali

It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don't like that. This is by the way.