“fear doesn t listen to reason it takes it own counsel”
“Sound reasoning is impossible without truth.”
“As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.”
“It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.”
“I might as well have struggled with a bear or reasoned with a lunatic.”
“We can observe, but reasoning about what we observe requires truth.”
“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
“Humor is reason gone mad.”
“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
“I mean, you could claim that anything s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody s proved it doesn t exist!”
“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”
“In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.”
“It didn t make you noble to step away from something that wasn t working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.”
“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”
“Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”
“Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.”