346 Quotes About Rationality

Of course, when you shut off your brain from rational analysis, any book is dangerous. Taking literally ancient parables from thousands of years ago is much more dangerous than playing with a loaded gun. Ancient scrawls, written by different authors in different centuries with different agendas--yeah, let's get mad literal about that. The literalness problem is compounded in religion by the circular logic of not being allowed to question anything, or else you're lacking faith.

In the Hindu religion, one can[not] have freedom of speech. A Hindu must surrender his freedom of speech. He must act according to the Vedas. If the Vedas do not support the actions, instructions must be sought from the Smritis, and if the Smritis fail to provide any such instructions, he must follow in the footsteps of the great men. He is not supposed to reason. Hence, so long as you are in the Hindu religion, you cannot expect to have freedom of thought

When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.

People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up.

Nietzsche viewed morality as an evolving weapon wielded by one group against another for self-interested reasons. There’s no doubt that Nietzsche is correct that no absolute moral code can be established since there is no absolute, objective, unambiguous standard to which to appeal, and upon which everyone would agree. However, rational morality at least gives us a framework to which all rational people can subscribe, and that’s as good as it can ever get.

Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.

Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse.

You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational and believing things that are true. If you want to set yourself apart from other people you have to do things that are arbitrary and believe things that are false.

I do not declare that I have no intention of marrying on any general principle. If I were to see the right man, no doubt I should eat my words with a ready appetite. The simple fact is, I have never seen him yet, and at the age of thirty, reason inclines me rather to conclude that he does not exist, than to persist in the belief that he is still somewhere to be found