Dean Inge Quotes

I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.

One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself.

As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there. So rather than correct the weird ideas, I would rather them to know how to think in the first place. Then they can correct the weird idea themselves.

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.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.

I'm a rationalist and a skeptic, someone who safely separates faith from reason.

All of us, whether we are ignorant of philosophy or professors of philosophy, find it easier to follow dogma than to think.

Believing isn't thinking, but we've been programmed to believe that believing is thinking. To use our intelligence to think means we're keeping the energy active, we're thinking, we're really using the power of our intelligence in a thinking way. But when we've been programmed to believe, we're no longer thinking, because energy flows.

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.

Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises.

In matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard for any other consideration.

Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.

Abstract truth is the eye of reason.

Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created

Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth.

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

The more one is absorbed in so-called philosophy, the greater one's delusion and blindness.

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being-free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies-and therefore you can find out what religion is.

Critical thinking is to a liberal education as faith is to religion. ... the converse was true also - faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.

By freethinking I mean the use of the understanding in endeavoring to find out the meaning of any proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature of the evidence for or against, and in judging of it according to the seeming force or weakness of the evidence.

Man needs knowledge in order to survive, and only reason can achieve it; men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason, can exist only as parasites on the thinking of others.