Quotes About Rationalist

Interestingly, Spinoza's philosophy is both mystical, rational and theistic. Yet he was excommunicated from the Jewish community for his views, denounced as an atheist by Christians and declared so wicked that at one time his books were publicly burnt. Leibniz, who owes a great deal to him, rarely acknowledges the debt. Despite the rigour and integrity of his work, Spinoza remains one of the lesser studied and least regarded of all the rationalist philosophers.

I was brought up by a Marxist rationalist stepfather, so I don't believe in the supernatural or religion or horoscopes, and the absolute nature of death is quite helpful for me. My husband was there, then he wasn't.

As a rationalist, pragmatist, and a scientist I rarely involve myself in the cosmological arguments of the creation of the universe.

I'm a rationalist. And I can see no evidence for a benevolent and interventionist creator.

These Rationalist robots are also very uncomfortable with the newer circuits — and some of them spend most of their lives writing articles and books devoted to "proving" that the newer circuits do not exist and that all scientists who have recorded the behavior of these newer circuits are liars, fools, bunglers, charlatans or some manner of Damned Heretics.

I am certainly a romantic, but with a good scientific and rationalist half: thus, from this conflict I sometimes come out victorious, but exhausted.

For Helen Keller, it was not visual perception that sustained the meaning-making dog-DOG relation. Yet she and I, each in our way, can both satisfy the conditions for DOG-possession according to the present [rationalist] account of those conditions.

The rationalist is convinced that every sophont is at bottom predictable, acting according to consistent (if not necessarily already well-known) rules. The mystic, for his part, believes that every creature conceals within its breast some element of the wild and unpredictable.

all the respects that I have so far mentioned, conversation fits the bill of a free association which is subservient to no purpose but itself, and which is destroyed by the bossiness and urgencies of the planner, the utopian and the rationalist. On the other hand, conversations have to be among few participants if they are to dispense with some kind of central discipline or with accepted procedures and conventions. As

And nothing . . . disquiets a rationalist more than a forest.

A discursive student is almost certain to fall into bad company. Ten minutes with a French novel or a German rationalist have sent a reader away with a fever for life.

He was a convinced but hardworked rationalist, always hard at it re-convincing himself of his convictions.

While it is not impossible to have a Nurturant Parent rationalist morality (perhaps certain versions of utilitarianism are of this sort), Reason is not typically understood as a nurturer. Reason commands, lays down the law, gives orders, judges, reprimands, and so on. We almost never conceive of it as nurturing, feeling, caring, and so forth.

Ideas are 10 a penny. It's the execution that's the hard thing to do. House is standing up against a tide of sentiment and emotionalism over reason that threatens to engulf this world. When you think about it, a rationalist, a man of science and reason, is in a pretty lonely position.

As a scientific rationalist, Freud distrusts the manifest content of dreams.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines delusion as "a false conception and persistent belief unconquerable by reason in something that has no existence in fact."45 As an intuitionist, I'd say that the worship of reason is itself an illustration of one of the most long-lived delusions in Western history: the rationalist delusion.

rationalist to describe anyone who believes that reasoning is the most important and reliable way to obtain moral knowledge.

Western philosophy has been worshipping reason and distrusting the passions for thousands of years.4 There's a direct line running from Plato through Immanuel Kant to Lawrence Kohlberg. I'll refer to this worshipful attitude throughout this book as the rationalist delusion.

there's a deeper reason so many young psychologists began to study morality from a rationalist perspective, and this was Kohlberg's second great innovation: he used his research to build a scientific justification for a secular liberal moral order.

He was a rationalist, he downplayed the role of authority, and he was critical of the inequities of the caste system as it existed then. He was the only religious leader in the history of the world who asked people not to follow his teachings based on his authority. That's a quite modern, egalitarian, and refreshing point of view.

The power of reason is thought small in these days, but I remain an unrepentant rationalist. Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife. Therefore every orgy of unreason in the end strengthens the friends of reason, and shows afresh that they are the only true friends of humanity.

I'm a rationalist and a skeptic, someone who safely separates faith from reason.

The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong. Above all, he values the intellectual independence of others too highly to want to convince them in important matters. He would much rather invite contradiction, preferably in the form of rational and disciplined criticism. He seeks not to convince but to arouse — to challenge others to form free opinions.

When I started writing, I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.