Logic - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

Could it be that there were other things more desirable than cold logic and undefiled brain power?

- Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Chessmen of Mars (1922)

I hope we shall conquer. More than that - I am certain we shall conquer. Because Reason must prevail.

- Yevgeny Zamiatin, We (1924), translated by Mirra Ginsburg (1972)

What system do men follow if not that of logic?

- A. E. van Vogt, ''Vault of the Beast'' (1940)

The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Star Beast (1954)

I know the value of the cold light of reason. But I also know the deep shadows that light can cast - the shadows that can blind men to truth.

- Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester, Curse of the Demon (film, 1957)

In a short-term argument it is helpful to have pure reason on your side - even though such an ally could be depended upon to stab you to the heart if you depended upon him too long.

- James Blish, A Case of Conscience (1958)

Since human reason isn't capable of understanding everything, it's irrelevant whether or not this explanation makes sense.

- Stanislaw Lem, The Investigation (1959), translated by Adele Milch (1974)

Every time you decide something without having a good reason, you jump to Conclusions whether you like it or not. It's such an easy trip to make that I've been here hundreds of times.

- Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth (1961)

Ape is of course the only rational creature, the only one possessing a mind as well as a body. The most materialistic of our scientists recognize the supernatural essence of the simian mind.

- Pierre Boulle, Planet of the Apes (1963), translated by Xan Fielding (1963)

''Logic'' proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road (1963)

How can you expect one species to follow the logic of another?

- Philip K. Dick, The Crack in Space (1965)

He's a king, and does not see things rationally, but as a king.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

Here we are entering the philosophical realm of Spinoza when he saw, and I think with great profundity, that if a falling stone could reason, it would think, ''I want to fall at the rate of thirty-two feet per second per second.'' Freewill for us - that is, when we feel desire, when we are conscious of wanting to do what we do - may be even for us an illusion.

- Philip K. Dick, ''The Android and the Human'' (1972)

For a mind once honestly wedded to reason there is no divorce.

- Edgar Pangborn, ''The Children's Crusade'' (1974)

It sounded logical - but I could not forget Kettering's Law: ''Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.''

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast (1980)

Assumptions are the things you don't know you're making.

- Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See (1990)

Descartes' immortal conclusion cogito ergo sum was recently subjected to destruction testing by a group of graduate researchers at Princeton led by Professors Montjuic and Lauterbrunnen, and now reads, in the revised version to be found in the Shorter Harvard Orthodoxy: (a) I think, therefore I am; or (b) Perhaps I thought, therefore I was; but (c) These days, I tend to leave all that side of things to my wife.

- Tom Holt, Ye Gods! (1992)

Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.

- Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (film, 1992)

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

- Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent (1998)