115 Quotes About Rationalism

A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.

The great rationalist Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” The religious mystic the Buddha said, “I think, therefore I am not.” Why is the Buddha much more popular than Descartes? Because the average person barely thinks at all.

Vinculum alius ergo sum - Another bond, therefore I am.

[Man] has transformed himself into a thing.

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

Should you wish to pursue the infinity of truth, you must make yourself humble as ashes and vigorous as the wind. And with that attitude flowing through your veins, bring your novel thinking in action and disinfect the world with a bold, radical and positive change – a change of egalitarianism, a change of globalism, a change of rationalism, a change of humanism.

I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

Like Midas, the Rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can never get a square meal of experience.

The way forward for humanity is not really about giving up either empiricism or ethics, rather it's about knowing which one is needed when and what kind of implications it will have on others.