Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [81-100] of 403 Reason quotesReason QuotesReason Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Of all the inanimate objects, of all men’s creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning toward error.~ Joseph Conrad Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty.~ Anthony Ashley Cooper Every politician, every member of the clerical profession, ought to incur the reasonable suspicion of being an interested supporter of false doctrines, who becomes angry at opposition, and endeavors to cast an odium on free inquiry. Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.~ Thomas Cooper It is always the task of the intellectual to “think otherwise.” This is not just a perverse idiosyncrasy. It is an absolutely essential feature of a society.~ Harvey Cox [T]here are, at bottom, basically two ways to order social affairs, Coercively, through the mechanisms of the state -- what we can call political society. And voluntarily, through the private interaction of individuals and associations -- what we can call civil society. ... In a civil society, you make the decision. In a political society, someone else does. ... Civil society is based on reason, eloquence, and persuasion, which is to say voluntarism. Political society, on the other hand, is based on force.~ Edward H. Crane Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.~ Leonardo Da Vinci If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.~ Dalai Lama The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.~ Clarence S. Darrow This nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle – among others – that honest men may honestly disagree; that if they all say what they think, a majority of the people will be able to distinguish truth from error; that in the competition of the marketplace of ideas, the sounder ideas will in the long run win out.~ Elmer Davis Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.~ Richard Dawkins The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.~ Remy De Gourmont He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide at each step, the course of his life, and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power.~ Salvador De Madariaga I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.~ Michel de Montaigne If falsehood like truth had only one face, we would be in better shape. For we would take as certain the opposite of what the liar said. But the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and a limitless field.~ Michel de Montaigne It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration -- nay, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.~ Michel De Montaigne I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether things are so.~ Michel De Montaigne It is unreasonable ... to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life.~ Charles de Montesquieu I know of but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.~ Antoine De Saint-Exupery I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.~ Alexis de Tocqueville This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types.~ Judge Braswell Dean Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print