Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

Many things complicated by nature are restored by reason.

Show Holmes a drop of water and he would deduce the existence of the Atlantic. Show it to me and I would look for a tap. That was the difference between us.

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.

I think like a detective.

I'm here to make sense.

Help the man-in-the-street make sense of the bewildering.

I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

One good analogy is worth three hours discussion.

The wonderful thing about maths is it's a totally logical subject, and a pathway has been marked out. I think a lot of these things can be crystallised in something quite essential, that people can get. If I can't explain it, I realise that's probably because I don't completely understand it myself.

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.

All things make sense; you just have to fathom how they make sense.

There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

if you do not appreciate the mathematics, you cannot see, among the great variety of facts, that logic permits you to go from one to the other

I'm not a great student, so I don't know that I would have been a great detective. Part of my brain sort of works that way, like wanting to figure out puzzles and figure out what happened and why people do the things they do and who they are and how it happened.

It is by logic we prove. It is by intuition we discover.

With the Great Detective, to think was to act, and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together.

I'm fascinated by the logic that leads to something.

When I was a kid, I loved Sherlock Holmes. I'm not interested in crimes. I'm interested in the mind of the detective and his process, which to me is a lot like the artist.

Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right. There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time.

I am inclined to think -' said I. 'I should do so,' Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.

I'm just quizzical about how things work and why things are.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

My favourite subjects at school were algebra and logic: making a big problem into something small.

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

The solutions all are simple - after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.