Anthony de Mello Quotes

If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?

I don't really believe in the Devil, but if the Devil is the Father of Lies, then he certainly invented the Internet.

Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds

The devil, that old stager, who leads downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!

And thus I clothe my naked villainy With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

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

Logic might be unanswerable because it was so absolutely wrong.

The devil doesn't fill us with hatred for God, but with forgetfulness of God.

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.

I hope you become comfortable with the use of logic without being deceived into concluding that logic will inevitably lead you to the correct conclusion.

Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning, - nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct.

O woman, perfect woman! what distraction Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!

You may have orthodox heads, and yet you may have the devil in your hearts.

It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.

Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.

There is a mighty big difference between good sound reasons and reasons that sound good.

When a false argument puts on the appearance of a true one, then it is properly called a sophism or fallacy.

Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.

I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future. Turing believes machines think Turing lies with men Therefore machines do not think Yours in distress, Alan

The Devil may also make use of morality.

Logic invents as many fallacies as it detects; it is a good weapon, but as liable to be used in a bad as in a good cause.

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.