Morris Raphael Cohen Quotes

• A creative element is surely present in all great systems, and it does not seem possible that all sympathy or fundamental attitudes of will can be entirely eliminated from any human philosophy.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Sympathy, Attitude, Philosophy

  46 Copy quote

• Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Essence, Religion, Transcendentalism

  39 Copy quote

• Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas - an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Attitude, Self, Support

  Morris Raphael Cohen (1993). “The Faith of a Liberal”, p.437, Transaction Publishers

  19 Copy quote

• Law must be viewed as a formless mass of isolated decisions.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Law, Decision, Mass

  "Law and the Social Order: Essays in Legal Philosophy".

  15 Copy quote

• Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Belief, Value Of Life, Conservatism

  Morris Raphael Cohen (1993). “The Faith of a Liberal”, p.438, Transaction Publishers

  12 Copy quote

• If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Evil, Claims, Ifs

  "The dark side of religion". Essay by Morris Raphael Cohen published in "Religion from Tolstoy to Camus" edited by Walter Kaufmann (p. 294), 1964.

  5 Copy quote

• Wisdom is not to be obtained from textbooks, but must be coined out of human experience in the flame of life.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Wisdom, Flames, Textbooks

  7 Copy quote

• To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  People, Majority, Authority

  4 Copy quote

• The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Doubt, Done, Succeed

  5 Copy quote

• Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Strong, Philosophy, Hygiene

  11 Copy quote

• Small groups or communities may be far more oppressive to the individual than larger ones. Men are in many ways freer in large cities than in small villages.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Freedom, Men, Cities

  10 Copy quote

• Inertia is the first law of history, as it is of physics.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Law, History, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• If a philosophic theory is once ruled out of court, no one can tell when it will appear again.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Court, Theory, Philosophic

  4 Copy quote

• Again, both literature and philosophy work by appealing to certain reigning idols.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Philosophy, Idols, Literature

  8 Copy quote

• It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Thinking, Views, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• Liberalism regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situation, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Travel, Adventure, Guarantees That

  Morris Raphael Cohen (1993). “The Faith of a Liberal”, p.438, Transaction Publishers

  4 Copy quote

• It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Philosophy, Two, Philosopher

  The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 7, p. 407, 1910.

  8 Copy quote

• The method of exposition which philosophers have adopted leads many to suppose that they are simply inquiries, that they have no interest in the conclusions at which they arrive, and that their primary concern is to follow their premises to their logical conclusions.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Inquiry, Philosopher, Logical

  7 Copy quote

• Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Philosophy, Past, Idols

  7 Copy quote

• All logic texts are divided into two parts. In the first part, on deductible logic, the fallacies are explained; in the second part, on inductive logic, they are committed.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Two, Intelligence, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• By no amount of reasoning can we altogether eliminate all contingency from our world. Moreover, pure speculation alone will not enable us to get a determinate picture of the existing world. We must eliminate some of the conflicting possibilities, and this can be brought about only by experiment and observation.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Science, Our World, Conflict

  16 Copy quote

• The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  World, Philosopher, Logic

  7 Copy quote

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