Rationalism Quotes - Page 2

• You all know that certain things are necessary to make a religion. First of all, there is the book. The power of the book is simply marvellous! Whatever it be, the book is the centre round which human allegiance gathers. Not one religion is living today but has a book. With all its rationalism and tall talk, humanity still clings to the books. In your country every attempt to start a religion without a book has failed. In India sects rise with great success, but within a few years they die down, because there is no book behind them. So in every other country.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Country, Book, Years

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• Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.

  Arthur Erickson

  Art, Enemy, Architecture

  Speech to McGill University School of Architecture, www.arthurerickson.com. October 21, 2000.

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• I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.

  Isaac Asimov

  Play, Atheism, Waste

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• As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe. The catastrophe consisted in the splitting up of the world into the realms of matter and mind, and the identification of 'mind' with conscious thinking. The result of this identification was the shallow rationalism of l' esprit Cartesien, and an impoverishment of psychology which it took three centuries to remedy even in part.

  Arthur Koestler

  Philosophy, Science, Thinking

  Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation”

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• As the power of Christianity declined through the centuries that have followed the Reformation, Calvinism played a less and less important part, while the new philosophies of mechanism and rationalism correspondingly increased.

  Ralph Adams Cram

  Philosophy, Important, Christianity

  RALPH ADAMS CRAM (1922). “TOWARDS THE GREAT PEACE”

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• Unlike the rationalism of the French Revolution, true liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I can only deplore the militant and essentially illiberal antireligionism which animated so much of nineteenth-century Continental liberalism. ... What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different sphere which ought not to be confused.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Spiritual, Respect, Confused

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• Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us.

  Huston Smith

  Dark, Science, Woods

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• The term "rational" and its variants (rationality, rationalism) are used in a lot of contexts in economic debate, both positively and negatively, but nearly always sloppily or dishonestly. A specimen I've seen on more occasions than I can count is the line (usually presented with a sense of witty originality) "if you are opposed to economic rationalism, you must be in favor of economic irrationalism"... I've come to the conclusion that the word "rational" has no meaning that cannot better be conveyed by some alternative term and that the best advice is probably to avoid it altogether.

  John Quiggin

  Witty, Advice, Alternatives

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• Before the scientific rationalism took hold of our minds and before we became succumbed to a materialistic worldview, the Western philosophy was holistic and relational, and even now there are many scientists in the West seeing things totally interconnected.

  Satish Kumar

  Philosophy, Mind, West

  Interview with Frank Lipman, www.drfranklipman.com. April 14, 2009.

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• Skeptics, who flatly deny the existence of any unexplained phenomenon in the name of 'rationalism,' are among the primary contributors to the rejection of science by the public. People are not stupid and they know very well when they have seen something out of the ordinary. When a so-called expert tells them the object must have been the moon or a mirage, he is really teaching the public that science is impotent or unwilling to pursue the study of the unknown.

  Jacques Vallee

  Stupid, Teaching, Moon

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• Science is not sacrosanct. The mere fact that it exists, is admired, has results is not sufficient for making it a measure of excellence. Modern science arose from global objections against earlier views and rationalism itself, the idea that there are general rules and standards for conducting our affairs, affairs of knowledge included, arose from global objections to common sense.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Views, Ideas, Common Sense

  "Against Method". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1975.

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• There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give his work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Jesus, Giving, Heaven

  Albert Schweitzer (2010). “The Quest of the Historical Jesus”, p.396, Lulu.com

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• Hellenic science is a victory of rationalism, which appears greater, not smaller, when one is made to realize that it had been won in spite of the irrational beliefs of the Greek people; all in all, it was a triumph of reason in the face of unreason. Some knowledge of Greek superstitions is needed not only for a proper appreciation of that triumph but also for the justification of occasional failures, such as the many Platonic aberrations.

  George Sarton

  Appreciation, People, Greek

  George Sarton (2012). “Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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• War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.

  Joseph Sobran

  Hate, War, Optimism

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• Lasker thought that his rationalism rendered him immune from the surprises of chess theory.

  Savielly Tartakower

  Chess, Surprise, Theory

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• If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Ambition, People, Goal

  Nadine Gordimer (1980). “Burger's Daughter”, Penguin Group USA

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• It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.

  Bertrand Russell

  Christian, Teaching, Men

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.221, Psychology Press

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• While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.

  Thomas Sowell

  Black, Levels, Individual

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• In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility.

  John Buchan

  Heaven, World, Earth

  John Buchan (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)”, p.754, Delphi Classics

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• The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

  Lyman Abbott

  Men, Essence, Transcendentalism

  Lyman Abbott (1872). “Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish”, p.9

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• The question rather is how we should do science and theology in light of the impending collapse of Enlightenment rationalism and scientific naturalism. These ideologies are on the way out. They are on the way out.

  William A. Dembski

  Light, Way, Should

  William A. Dembski (2002). “Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology”, p.14, InterVarsity Press

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• To later Romans Ennius was the personification of the spirit of early Rome; by them he was called "The Father of Roman Poetry." We must remember how truly Greek he was in his point of view. He set the example for later Latin poetry by writing the first epic of Rome in Greek hexameter verses instead of in the old Saturnian verse. He made popular the doctrines of Euhemerus, and he was in general a champion of free thought and rationalism.

  Quintus Ennius

  Father, Latin, Writing

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• Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Thinking, Common Sense, Kind

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• Rationalism... is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Belief, Form, Word Of God

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.218, Verso

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• The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Romantic, Enemy, Enlightenment

  Isaiah Berlin (2013). “Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder”, p.320, Princeton University Press

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