Thomas Keating Quotes

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

Men need knowledge in order to overpower their passions and master their prejudices.

Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.

Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.

The people I know who seem to make unusual efforts at rationality, are unusually honest, or, failing that, at least have unusually bad social skills.

Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by other people, we get indoctrinated and we get influenced by advertising.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Reasonable, sensible men can always make a reasonable scheme appear such to other reasonable men.

Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

Reason without passion is sterile, but passion without reason is hysteria.

When a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

Among intellectuals who consider themselves 'scientific,' the phrase 'the nature of man' is apt to have the effect of a red flag on a bull.

Man is born a tabula rasa; he must learn how to choose the ends that are proper for him and the means that he must adopt to attain them. All this must be done by his reason.

The truth is that the right decision often can't be led with either head or heart exclusively.

Italians think with their heads.

By the rules of debate, if you lose your cool, you've lost the game.

Roles are extremely finite, but human beings are infinite.

As humans, we are not so rationalist as we think we are. I think our biggest quality is indeed that we are human, truly human: if our biggest quality would be rationality, we would lose our soul.

Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.

One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart-intelligence and goodness-shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.

What I believe in my heart must make sense in my mind.

Most of the time you should use reason, there is no doubt about that because gut often makes us susceptible to lots of different biases, particularly if what you're deciding is something that you really, that expertise can be brought to bear on it, there is a way in which you can align the odds, so then you should really use reason.

Reason and emotion counsel and supplement each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and puts aside the other, recklessly deprives himself of a portion of the aid granted us for the regulation of our conduct.

Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.