Excluded Middle

Famous quotes containing the words excluded and/or middle:

    Reasoning from the common course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the Supreme Cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy; what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth: And if the former existence noways concerned us, neither will the latter.
    David Hume (1711–1776)

    Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can.
    William Gouge, Puritan writer. As quoted in The Rise and Fall of Childhood by C. John Sommerville, ch. 11 (rev. 1990)