Illogical Book Quotes

Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life...If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature...Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.

Perhaps Lila was right: my book—even though it was having so much success—really was bad, and this was because it was well organized, because it was written with obsessive care, because I hadn’t been able to imitate the disjointed, unaesthetic, illogical, shapeless banality of things.

Among the things that can drive a thinker to despair is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary for man and that much good comes from it.

We are raised in a society where we are taught to believe a more logical reason for an illogical happening rather than the illogical reason for something which may be of the unknown, hence, why the logical answer is illogical to the logical person.

No heroism in forever following the calculations of one’s cunning mind. A man ought to attempt the illogical, if there’s fire in his heart.

We are primordially illogical and hence unjust beings and can recognise this fact: this is one of the greatest and most baffling discords of existence.

It is illogical to expect smiles from others if one does not smile oneself. Therefore, one can see that many things depend on one’s own behaviour.

Among the things that can drive a thinker to despair is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary for man and that much good comes from it. It is so firmly lodged in the passions, in speech, in art, in religion, and generally in everything which endows life with value, that one cannot extricate it without doing irreparable harm to these beautiful things. Only the very naive are capable of thinking that the nature of man can be transformed into a purely logical one; but, if there were degrees of approximation to this goal, how much would not have to vanish along this path! Even the most rational man needs nature again from time to time, that is, his illogical basic attitude to all things.

I can't prove it yet know it when I seem it.

There is a standard theory about childhood that everybody works from, and critics check whether a picture book has followed the 'rules' about what is right for children, or what is healthy for children, or what we think is right and healthy for children. This comes into conflict all the time with those things that are mysterious. Children are much more catholic in taste; will tolerate ambiguities, peculiarities, and things illogical; will take them into their unconscious and deal with them as best they can.

My refusal to remove the book from the library was backed by a majority of the Board of Governors. I wrote back to Mr Malfoy, explaining my decision: So-called pure-blood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on their family trees. They then attempt to foist their hypocrisy upon the rest of us by asking us to ban works dealing with the truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles, and I should therefore consider it both illogical and immoral to remove works dealing with the subject from our students' store of knowledge.(4) This exchange marked the beginning of Mr Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as Headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favourite Death Eater. (4)My response prompted several further letters from Mr Malfoy, but as they consisted mainly of opprobrious remarks on my sanity, parentage and hygiene, their relevance to this commentary is remote.

Burns collaborated with pioneering cognitive psychologist Aaron T. Beck, who believed that most depression or anxiety was simply a result of illogical and negative thinking. He

Remember, God is what makes the four statements at the heart of this book work: 1. Life is to be loved and to love. 2. Life is to trust God in every moment. 3. Life is to be at peace with God and yourself. 4. Life is to enjoy God.

So here was Martha at home, ‘resting her eyes’ but reading as much as ever. And how curious were the arguments between the two women over this illogical behaviour. For Mrs Quest did not say, ‘You are supposed to have strained your eyes, why are you reading?’ She made such remarks as ‘You do it on purpose to upset me!’ Or ‘Why do you have to read that kind of book?’ Or ‘You are ruining your whole life, and you won’t take my advice.’ Martha maintained a stubborn but ironical silence, and continued to read.

If you could meet any character from literature, who would it be? I would not want characters to come to my world. They’d lose their special qualities, the perfect amount of what I should know about them. On the other hand, I could go to theirs because they would not have any preconceptions of who I was. I’d like to hang out with the Cheshire cat, learn how to disappear, and speak in smart illogic. He would look exactly like his pen-and-ink illustration by Tenniel. I’d be rendered in pen and ink, too. That would be required for entering a pen-and-ink world with its particular dimensional strangeness.

I realized in a flash that the memory was already literature and that perhaps Lila was right: my book—even though it was having so much success—really was bad, and this was because it was well organized, because it was written with obsessive care, because I hadn’t been able to imitate the disjointed, unaesthetic, illogical, shapeless banality of things.

In logic class, I opened my textbook—the last place I was expecting to find comic inspiration—and was startled to find that Lewis Carroll, the supremely witty author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was also a logician. He wrote logic textbooks and included argument forms based on the syllogism, normally presented in logic books this way: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. _________________________________ Therefore, Socrates is mortal. But Carroll’s were more convoluted, and they struck me as funny in a new way: 1) Babies are illogical. 2) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile. 3) Illogical persons are despised. __________________________________________ Therefore, babies cannot manage crocodiles. And: 1) No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste. 2) No modern poetry is free from affectation. 3) All your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles. 4) No affected poetry is popular among people of taste. 5) Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles. __________________________________________ Therefore, all your poems are uninteresting.

truth, providing they are gravely asserted by some one claiming authority. The most illogical ideas are accepted without dispute or examination, providing they are stated solemnly and authoritatively. Particularly in the respective fields of religion and politics do we find this blind acceptance of illogical ideas by the multitude. Mere assertion by the leaders seems sufficient for the multitude of followers to acquiesce.

Abrahamism is set up in such a way that God cannot punish anyone, only reward them with heaven. Someone else has to do the punishing, hence “Satan”. But if Satan is God’s sworn enemy why would he do God’s punishing for him? Why wouldn’t he reward those who rejected God, exactly as he’d done? They’re on his side. They’re allies, not souls to be punished. Abrahamism promotes a notion that the “good guys” can never punish anyone, but Abrahamism is also based on the eternal punishment of the “bad guys”. So, the logic, or rather illogic, of Abrahamism requires the bad guys to organise their own punishment. But why would they? What’s in it for them? Moreover, the bad guy head honcho is supposed to be the punisher in chief. But why would he punish people who had disobeyed God? Why wouldn’t he have a party with them? Abrahamism is wholly devoid of sense.

Let’s find out where your shame came from by taking a look at your past. But before we do that, I want to address a common misconception people have about looking at their past. I have heard many people misinterpret the apostle Paul’s words: I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead…Philippians 3:13 People use this verse to teach that a person should never reflect on their past to resolve their present problems. They think looking to your past is a sign of doubt and weak faith. “Good Christians” should forget about their past, they say, and focus on who they are as a believer in Jesus. That might sound good, but I couldn't disagree more. That kind of thinking is both unbiblical and illogical. It is unbiblical because Paul wasn’t telling people to forget past problems. He was simply referring to his former life when he sought to please God through religious works like praying, giving money, or fasting. He boasted about these religious habits as if they got him closer to God. But he stopped that kind of foolish thinking when he came to learn what Jesus had done for him. Paul wasn’t making an all-inclusive statement telling people to forget everything about their past. He was simply telling his personal story and encouraging people to find their acceptance from God based on his love, not on their good works. To read more into his words is to twist the meaning.

Methodical writing distracts me from the present condition of men. But the certainty that everything has been already written nullifies or makes phantoms of us all. I know of districts where the youth prostrate themselves before books and barbarously kiss the pages, though they do not know how to make out a single letter. Epidemics, heretical disagreements, the pilgrimages which inevitably degenerate into banditry, have decimated the population. I believe I have mentioned the suicides, more frequent each year. Perhaps I am deceived by old age and fear, but I suspect that the human species - the unique human species - is on the road to extinction, while the Library will last on forever. Illuminated, solitary infinite, perfectly immovable, filled with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret. Infinite, I have just written. I have not interpolated this adjective merely from rhetorical habit. It is not illogical, I say, to think that the world is infinite. Those who judge it to be limited, postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairs and hexagons could inconceivably cease - a manifest absurdity. Those who imagine it to be limitless forget that the possible number of books is limited. I dare insinuate the following solution to this ancient problem: the Library is limitless and periodic. If an eternal voyager were to traverse it in any direction, he would find, after many centuries, that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder (which, repeated, would constitute an order: Order itself). My solitude rejoices in this elegant hope. Mar del Plata 1941

The overwhelming favorites to dominate the race to become the so-called Information Superhighway were competing proprietary technologies from industry powerhouses such as Oracle and Microsoft. Their stories captured the imagination of the business press. This was not so illogical, since most companies didn’t even run TCP/IP (the software foundation for the Internet)—they ran proprietary networking protocols such as AppleTalk, NetBIOS, and SNA. As late as November 1995, Bill Gates wrote a book titled The Road Ahead, in which he predicted that the Information Superhighway—a network connecting all businesses and consumers in a world of frictionless commerce—would be the logical successor to the Internet and would rule the future. Gates later went back and changed references from the Information Superhighway to the Internet, but that was not his original vision. The implications of this proprietary vision were not good for business or for consumers. In the minds of visionaries like Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, the corporations that owned the Information Superhighway would tax every transaction by charging a “vigorish,” as Microsoft’s then–chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold, referred to it. It’s difficult to overstate the momentum that the proprietary Information Superhighway carried. After Mosaic, even Marc and his cofounder, Jim Clark, originally planned a business for video distribution to run on top of the proprietary Information Superhighway, not the Internet. It wasn’t until deep into the planning process that they decided that by improving the browser to make it secure, more functional, and easier to use, they could make the Internet the network of the future. And that became the mission of Netscape—a mission that they would gloriously accomplish.

children from pain and loss and tragedy and illness. You cannot be sure that you will always be married, let alone happily married. You cannot be sure you will always be employed, or healthy, or relatively sane. All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference. Humility does not mean self-abnegation, lassitude, detachment; it’s more like a calm recognition that you must trust in that which does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly, ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture; you must trust that you being a very good you matters somehow. That trying to be an honest and tender parent will echo for centuries through your tribe. That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will somehow matter in the social fabric, save a thread or two from unraveling. And you must do all of this with the sure and certain knowledge that you will never get proper credit for it, at all, one bit, and in fact the vast majority of the things you do right will go utterly unremarked; except, perhaps, in ways we will never know or understand, by the Arab Jew who once shouted about his cloak, and may have been somehow also the One who invented and infuses this universe and probably a million others—not to put a hard number on it or anything. Humility, the final frontier, as my late brother Kevin used to say. When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or several at once, sometimes; when we are older we take on other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you and I both know men and women who become trapped in the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to escape who they no longer wish to be; but finally, I think, if we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief, that none among us is actually rich or famous or more beautiful than another; and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and true finally about humility. This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that there is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love. That could be. I wouldn’t know; I am a muddle and a conundrum, shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.

Don’t imagine that I write just to write, or to publish, or to produce art. I write because this is the final goal, the supreme refinement, the temperamentally illogical refinement, of my cultivation of states of mind and feeling.

Half the ideas in this book are probably wrong. The history of human science is not encouraging. Galton's eugenics, Freud's unconscious, Durkheim's sociology, Mead's culture-driven anthropology, Skinner’s behaviorism, Piaget's early learning, and Wilson’s sociobiology all appear in retrospect to be riddled with errors and false perspectives. No doubt the Red Queen's approach is just another chapter in this marred tale. No doubt its politicization and the vested interests ranged against it will do as much damage as was done to previous attempts to understand human nature. The Western cultural revolution that calls itself political correctness will no doubt stifle inquiries it does not like, such as those into the mental differences between men and women. I sometimes feel that we are fated never to understand ourselves because part of our nature is to turn every inquiry into an expression of our own nature: ambitious, illogical, manipulative, and religious. "Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the Press," said David Hume. But then I remember how much progress we have made since Hume and how much nearer to the goal of a complete understanding of human nature we are than ever before. We will never quite reach that goal, and it would perhaps be better if we never did. But as long as we can keep asking why, we have a noble purpose.

Hardcore Gen X-tacy was a fringe concern. Things regularly cited as generationally totemistic were almost always less popular than things devoid of cultural timeliness. Bridget Jones’s Diary was more widely read than Jesus’ Son. For every album sold by Courtney Love, Shania Twain sold fourteen. Over and over, the gap between what’s most associated with Generation X dogma and the behavior of Generation X consumers is illogically vast.

In the whole history of theological exegesis and interpretation I know of nothing so utterly faulty, illogical and wholly unscriptural as that exegesis which teaches the angel song at Bethlehem to be the announcement of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace and that as such He should establish it among the nations after His ascension to heaven and during His absence from the world. The angels sang glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to “men of good will.” The angel who spoke to the shepherds keeping the temple sheep for the morning and the evening sacrifice was testifying to them that there was no longer need to keep the sheep for such a purpose. The day of animal sacrifices had passed, the living God had provided the true sacrifice, He who was born beneath the chaplet of heaven’s music, the Lamb of God ordained before the foundation of the world. He had been born into the world that He might make peace by the blood of His cross, not between man and man, not between nation and nation, but between man and God. He had been born to die and by His death reconcile a rebel world to God; on the basis of this sacrifice yet to be and when He should have risen from the dead as witness of the efficacy of His death He would bring peace to every soul that should be of good will—every soul that should surrender to the will of God by believing on Him, offering Him by faith as a sacrifice and claiming Him as a substitute. Every such soul should be at peace with, and have the peace of, God. This was the meaning of that natal hour at Bethlehem. The angels were not singing over Him as the Prince of Peace who had come to abolish war among the nations, but as the ordained sacrifice who should bring peace between the individual man and his God. And yet—He is to be the Prince of Peace and reign and rule as such over the earth, putting an end to war and establishing perfect peace among the nations. The promise of His reign and rule as the Prince of Peace is clearly set forth in Scripture; as it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his peace and government there shall be no end.” But when? Where? Listen: “Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it.” And hear what Gabriel says to Mary when he comes to announce to her that she has been chosen of Almighty God to give birth to the Messiah of Israel. The angel says: “Thou shalt call his name Jesus . . . He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” He is to be the Prince of Peace when He sits upon the throne of united Israel in their own land and not before.

A bias, put simply, is a systematic pattern of deviation from the norm in judgment. This deviation causes people to make inferences about other people and situations in a highly illogical fashion. People create their own “reality” from selective input.

What's so amusing?" he inquired, eyeing her curiously. "I don't believe this. I'm lying in bed with a near stranger, calmly chatting after making love. You are a wicked and potent temptation. You should be ashamed of yourself for demoralizing me. This is the most illogical and incredible thing I've ever done." He chuckled. "Count me in. I'm just as astonished and confused. I'm glad I met you first. You'd best be on your guard, woman; I'll probably shoot the first cowpoke who looks at you sideways." "How could I possibly notice him when my eyes are for you alone?" she quipped, caressing his smooth jawline. "Just make sure you remember that while I'm gone. I wouldn't want to challenge some new sweetheart the moment I return." "Aren't you mighty possessive for a man who has no claim on me?" she teased, snuggling up to him, savoring his words and new mood. Lynx shifted to remove a cross of pounded Spanish silver from his neck. He slipped it over her head and vowed, "That says you're mine." -Lynx & Calinda

The Warrior of Light knows the importance of intuition. In the midst of battle he has no time to think about the enemy’s blows – so he uses his instinct and obeys his angel. In times of peace he deciphers the signs that God sends him. People say: ‘He’s crazy.’ Or else: ‘He lives in a fantasy world.’ Or even: ‘How can he put his trust in such illogical things?’ But the warrior knows that intuition is God’s alphabet, and so he continues to listen to the wind and talk to the stars.

If you have not been able to show that the author is uninformed, misinformed, or illogical on relevant matters, you simply cannot disagree. You must agree. You cannot say, as so many students and others do, “I find nothing wrong with your premises, and no errors in reasoning, but I don’t agree with your conclusions.” All you can possibly mean by saying something like that is that you do not like the conclusions. You

use His tricks for our purposes.  In his book, The Abolition of Man, C.S Lewis grasped this phenomenon with uncanny insight, writing:

But Stanovich sees it differently. In his book, What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought, he coined the term “dysrationalia”—the inability to think and behave rationally despite having high intelligence. Research in cognitive psychology suggests there are two principal causes of dysrationalia. The first is a processing problem. The second is a content problem. Stanovich believes we process poorly. When solving a problem, he says, people have several different cognitive mechanisms to choose from. At one end of the spectrum are mechanisms with great computational power, but they are slow and require a great deal of concentration. At the opposite end of the spectrum are mechanisms that have low computational power, require very little concentration, and make quick action possible. “Humans are cognitive misers,” Stanovich writes, “because our basic tendency is to default to the processing mechanisms that require less computational effort, even if they are less accurate.”9 In a word, humans are lazy thinkers. They take the easy way out when solving problems and as a result, their solutions are often illogical. The second cause of dysrationalia is the lack of adequate content. Psychologists who study decision making refer to content deficiency as a “mindware gap.” First articulated by David Perkins, a Harvard cognitive scientist, mindware refers to the rules, strategies, procedures, and knowledge people have at their mental disposal to help solve a problem. “Just as kitchenware consists in tools for working in the kitchen, and software consists in tools for working with your computer, mindware consists in the tools for the mind,” explains Perkins. “A piece of mindware is anything a person can learn that extends the person’s general powers to think critically and creatively.

Logic is not easy for people to understand. Nearly all people, at some time or another, make illogical statements. Human beings are very complex. Many factors influence their thoughts and views. Humans may speak out of emotions, hopes, desires, etc., and none of their statements may be logical.

Jesus and Paul contended with Jews who taught that salvation was earned by obeying the law. That error lives on today in the minds of many Christians. Paul reveals the illogic of this position: If law is the standard, then obedience to law must be perfect in order to attain salvation. And perfect obedience is impossible for fallen humans. “By the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:20, 23). The only path to salvation, Paul asserts, is to claim the grace of Christ by submission to Him, for there is “no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1). Those who claim justification by law sign their own death warrant, for the law itself will condemn those who fail to obey it perfectly.

It’s not just illogical.” He began to breathe heavily. “IT’S UNETHICAL! I may have embraced it before, but now, I hate this intolerance, racism—everything that you have encouraged since I was young! There really should have been a ‘Tolerance for Dummies’ book by now!

We need to find you an outlet that’s going to be healthy and sustainable.” ​I consider these words for a moment. “Like what?” I finally ask, coming up with nothing. ​“Well, you could write,” the bigfoot therapist suggests. “Something creative is a great way to let that illogical side of you come out and play.” ​“Knowing my hyperfocus I’d probably just end up writing hundreds of books expressing every corner of my personality in a deeply intricate catalog of feelings,” I offer with a scoff. ​My therapist doesn’t seem phased.

There have been many times I made a decision while reading a book. I understand how seemingly illogical it feels.

chaos in her eyes Sitting with Christine, thinking about the chaos in her eyes, his emotional chaos, plotting to lure her out for a weekend of love, he wished in a chaotic, physical logic,” I wish I could count the number of causes and their probabilities that affect your feelings about me and that will determine what kind of answer I get if I ask you out for a date.” -What? What is that you just said? (An internal voice). By knowing the causes and the probabilities of the order in which they occur, you predict emotions Is that possible? Can we treat human emotions like the weather? Are there sensors to measure our emotions across time points in our history from which we can predict our future actions and their impact on us and others? Is there a computer with enormous capacity that can collect, analyze, and predict them? Do human emotions fall within this randomness? Throughout their history, physicists have rejected the idea of a relationship between human emotions and the surrounding world. Emotions are incomprehensible, they cannot be expected, what cannot be expected cannot be measured, what cannot be measured cannot be formulated into equations, and what cannot be formulated into equations, screw it, reject it, get rid of it, it is not part of this world. These ideas were acceptable to physicists in the past before we knew that we can control the effect of randomness to some extent through control sciences, and predict it by collecting a huge amount of data through special sensors and analyzing it. What affects when a plane arrives? Wind speed and direction? Our motors compensate for this unwanted turbulence. A lightning strike could destroy it? Our lightning rods control this disturbance and neutralize its danger. Running out of fuel? We have fuel meter indicators. Engine failure? We have alternative solutions for an emergency landing. All fall under the category of control sciences, But what about the basic building blocks of an airplane model during its flight? Humans themselves! A passenger suddenly felt dizzy, and felt ill, did the pilot decide to change his destination to the nearest airport? Another angry person caused a commotion, did he cause the flight to be canceled? Our emotions are part of this world, affect it, and can be affected by, interact with. Since we can predict chaos if we have the tools to collect, measure, and analyze it, and since we can neutralize its harmful effects through control science, thus, we can certainly do the same to human emotions as we do with weather and everything else that we have been able to predict and neutralize its undesirable effect. But would we get the desired results? nobody knows… -“Not today, not today, Robert”, he spoke to himself. – If you can’t do it today, you can’t do it for a lifetime, all you have to do now is simply to ask her out and let her chaos of feelings take you wherever she wants. Unconsciously, about to make the request, his phone rang, the caller being his mother and the destination being Tel Aviv. Standing next to Sheikh Ruslan at the building door, this wall fascinated him. -The universe worked in some parts of its paint even to the point of entropy, which it broke, so it painted a very beautiful painting, signed by its greatest law, randomness. If Van Gogh was here, he would not have a nicer one. Sheikh Ruslan knocked on the door, they heard the sound of footsteps behind him, someone opened a small window from it, as soon as he saw the Sheikh until he closed it immediately, then there was a rattle in the stillness of the alley, iron locks opening. Here Robert booked a front-row seat for the night with the absurd, illogic and subconscious.

People like illogical quotes rather than original thinking.

conceiving the reader as conversing with the author, as talking back. After he has said, “I understand but I disagree,” he can make the following remarks to the author: (1) “You are uninformed”; (2) “You are misinformed”; (3) “You are illogical—your reasoning is not cogent”; (4) “Your analysis is incomplete.

A half hour passed with no sign of Hana. Marcena tried her cell phone, the school secretary paged her. I don’t know what made me go back to the auditorium, except some obscure thought she might have tripped on the backstage cables on her way to join us. Lights were kept on during the school day, but I still almost missed her: she was sprawled across a book cart that had been wheeled behind the school orchestra’s drum set. As nearly as I could tell, she’d been shot twice at close range. My first, illogical thought was that Marcena had shot her to protect her precious Edge competition. My next thought was that Hana Milcek looked young and innocent in death.

Although Etteilla receives little credit in popular literature today, he can credited with many ‘firsts’': he was certainly the first to popularise fortune-telling with playing cards , the first to promote card reading as a professional activity and the first to publish books on the subject. He also was the first to use a pseudonym as a constant pen-name, initiating a tradition which was to flourish among XIX-oentury esoteric writers, as the following chapters will abundantly demonstrate. Thanks to Etteilla, Court de Gébelin's theory about the 'Egyptian' origin of the Tarot had a wider diffusion and fortune-telling with Tarot cards became popular. He was the first. too, to attempt to incorporate Tarot cards into a system of magical theory: his example, though not his means of doing so, was to be followed by others whose infuence has persisted longer. Last but not least, he can be credited too with the invention of the very word cartomancie, or rather of its forerunner, ‘cartonomancie', which appeared in his writings from 1782. Amazingly, one of his disciples was about to publish a book on 'cartomancie' in 1789 (the first occurrence of such a word in a European language), but as the book is now lost we only know it from Etteilla's very critical review, rejecting this quite new and ‘illogical’ word to which he opposed his ‘better’ cartonomancie. Nevertheless, cartomancie took hold and its use spread. In 1803, it entered de Wailly’s French dictionary, and from these it has found its way into alnost all European languages, Jean-Baptiste Alliette died on 12 December 1791. He was only 53, which is, even in the XVIII century, a rather young age at which to die, We unfortunately know nothing of what he died of. Etteilla was a fascinating character and deserves more than giving his name to a strange Tarot pack. There is something touching in the man, who was sincere and passionate, generous and enlightened (in all the meanings of the word in the late XVIII century.

He would dress a lot like Dilbert, only he'd be skinnier, and with a bumblebee-yellow pen and a clipboard. He'd have multiple facial tics and a quirky habit of raising a Vulcan eyebrow as if it were purely illogical to value privacy.

Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head—my mental models. None of these is or ever will be the real world. Our models usually have a strong congruence with the world. That is why we are such a successful species in the biosphere. Especially complex and sophisticated are the mental models we develop from direct, intimate experience of nature, people, and organizations immediately around us. However, and conversely, our models fall far short of representing the world fully. That is why we make mistakes and why we are regularly surprised. In our heads, we can keep track of only a few variables at one time. We often draw illogical conclusions from accurate assumptions, or logical conclusions from inaccurate assumptions. Most of us, for instance, are surprised by the amount of growth an exponential process can generate. Few of us can intuit how to damp oscillations in a complex system.

I. THE FIRST STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING: RULES FOR FINDING WHAT A BOOK IS ABOUT 1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter. 2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity. 3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. 4. Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve. II. THE SECOND STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING: RULES FOR INTERPRETING A BOOK’S CONTENTS 5. Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words. 6. Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences. 7. Know the author’s arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences. 8. Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and of the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve. III. THE THIRD STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING: RULES FOR CRITICIZING A BOOK AS A COMMUNICATION OF KNOWLEDGE A. General Maxims of Intellectual Etiquette 9. Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book. (Do not say you agree, disagree, or suspend judgment, until you can say “I understand.”) 10. Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously. 11. Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make. B. Special Criteria for Points of Criticism 12. Show wherein the author is uninformed. 13. Show wherein the author is misinformed. 14. Show wherein the author is illogical. 15. Show wherein the author’s analysis or account is incomplete. Note: Of these last four, the first three are criteria for disagreement. Failing in all of these, you must agree, at least in part, although you may suspend judgment on the whole, in the light of the last point.

Enlightenment thought was marked by two great attempts to ground ethics in something other than tradition. One belonged to the Scottish enlightenment – David Hume and Adam Smith – who sought it in emotion: the natural sympathy of human beings for one another.[8] The other was constructed by Immanuel Kant on the basis of reason. It was illogical to prescribe one ethical rule for some people and another for others. Reason is universal, argued Kant; therefore an ethic of reason would provide for universal respect (“Treat each person as an end in himself”).[9] Neither succeeded. In the twentieth century, villages and townships where Jews had lived for almost a thousand years witnessed their mass murder or deportation to the extermination camps with little or no protest. Neither Kantian reason nor Humean emotion were strong enough to inoculate Europe against genocide.

The Dunning-Kruger effect was codified by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University. The effect is this: a deliberate and thoughtful bias in judgment that is illogical. The person creates their own reality based on their perceptions and assumptions. An essential part of the Dunning-Kruger effect is the person who has come to the illogical conclusion simply cannot see their own incompetence or ineptitude. They are unable to realize that they are wrong.

Being Religeous - Question everything and practice what is logical & scientific! Leaving religion will make you illogical, and going forward ‘a confused Soul’!!

All of my cartoons are better than each other.

Heinlein, in Starship Troopers, by a description of a mirror reflection and the mention of an ancestor’s nationality, in the midst of a strophe on male makeup, generates the data that the first-person narrator, with whom we have been traveling now through two hundred and fifty-odd pages (of a three-hundred-and-fifty-page book), is black. Others have argued the surface inanities of this novel, decried its endless preachments on the glories of war, and its pitiful founderings on sublimated homosexual themes. But who, a year after reading the book, can remember the arguments for war—short of someone conscientiously collecting examples of human illogic? The arguments are inane; they do not relate to anything we know of war as a real interface of humanity with humanity: they do not stick in the mind. What remains with me, nearly ten years after my first reading of the book, is the knowledge that I have experienced a world in which the placement of the information about the narrator’s face is proof that in such a world the “race problem,” at least, has dissolved. The book as text—as object in the hand and under the eye—became, for a moment, the symbol of that world. In that moment, sign, symbol, image, and discourse collapse into one, nonverbal experience, catapulted from somewhere beyond the textus (via the text) at the peculiarly powerful trajectory only s-f can provide.

A drive to something or away from something divorced from a feeling one is desiring the beneficial or avoiding the harmful, a drive without some kind of knowing evaluation of the worth of its objective, does not exist in man. We are from the very beginning illogical and thus unjust beings and can recognize this: this is one of the greatest and most irresolvable discords of existence.