Category: Metaethics
Reason Quotes
“The assumption of a God is unnecessary; it explains nothing that cannot be better explained without it.”
-Graham Oppy
“Religious belief persists because of tradition and psychology, not because of argument.”
-Graham Oppy
“Disagreement is necessary in deliberations among mortals. As the saying goes, the more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us is right.”
Steven Pinker
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
- Aldous Huxley
“Science is not about certainty. It is about evidence.”
- Stephen J. Gould
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
- Isaac Asimov
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion.”
- Noam Chomsky
“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”
- John Stuart Mill
“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
- Richard Feynman
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this:
If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.”
- Carl Sagan
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
- Bertrand Russell
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
- Thomas Paine
“Appeals to intuition have no evidential force unless we know why the intuition should be trusted.”
-Patricia Churchland
“Theories should not be judged by whether we like their consequences.”
-Patricia Churchland
“If a phenomenon can be explained by the workings of the brain, then invoking non-physical substances adds nothing.”
-Patricia Churchland
“Critical thinking is essential to citizenship.”
-Martha Nussbaum
“We are not well served by cynicism about truth, nor by pretended certainty.”
-Susan Haack
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.”
-Hannah Arendt
"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."
-Thomas Paine
"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."
-George Bernard Shaw
"Skepticism is essential to the quest for knowledge, for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality."
-Paul Kurtz
“The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”
-Thomas Paine
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
-Charles Darwin
“We start with the evidence, and then figure out what the best explanation of it all really is, regardless of where this quest for truth takes us.”
-Richard Carrier
“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
“I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?”
-Eliezer Yudkowsky
“Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.”
-John Rawls
"I believe that all societies benefit when their people and their institutions become more rational."
Steven Pinker
"Virtue is nothing else than right reason."
-Seneca
"It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
-W.K. Clifford
"It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true."
-Bertrand Russell
"Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily."
-William of Ockham
“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”
-Bertrand Russell
“I have reasonable expectations based on evidence, I have trust that has been earned, I will grant trust tentatively. I don't have faith, faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have evidence.”
-Matt Dillahunty
“A wise man apportions his beliefs to the evidence.”
-David Hume
“When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken..."
-David Hume
“Illusions can be pleasant, but the rewards of truth are enormously better.”
-Sean Carroll
“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.”
-Stephen Hawking
“There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.”
-Daniel Dennett
“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”
-Sam Harris
“I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.”
-Sam Harris
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
-Carl Sagan
"As people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers."
-Robert Ingersoll
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
-Carl Sagan
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason."
-Thomas Paine
"Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way."
-Christopher Hitchens
"From its seeming to me-or to everyone-to be so, it doesn't follow that it is so."
-Ludwig Wittgenstein
