Rational Thinking Quotes

Faith is not the opposite of reason. Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation.

Faith and reason overpower each other throughout one's life, which results in contradiction, but the conflict never ceases in any sphere.

To me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet. That I haven’t understood enough. That I can’t know enough. That I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom… Those who tell you that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority: don’t think of that as a gift. Think of it as a poison chalice. Push it aside, however tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.

The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

When the facts change, you change your mind. I know that is a hard concept for people to get sometimes.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion

For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can't reason without them.

I am an intransigent atheist, though not a militant one. This means that I am not fighting against religion - I am fighting for reason.

I grew up Catholic, and when you've grown up, and these belief systems have been presented to you at a young, impressionable age, I don't know that you can shake them. Even if your rational mind tells you something else, sometimes they're so deeply ingrained that they are with you for the rest of your life.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals - and the most silly.

Common sense is very uncommon.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

When you are angry, you make bad decisions in direct proportion to the level of your anger.

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.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

... it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence rather than the unknown effects of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Reason is the Soul of the Law.

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but--more frequently than not --struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

No Ghost of any common sense begins a conversation