Reason and passion
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”
— David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
“Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding!”
Text from the included edition · German
“Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!”
— Immanuel Kant, Beantwortung der Frage Was ist Aufklärung
“I think, therefore I am.”
Text from the included edition · French
“Je pense, donc je suis.”
— Descartes, Discours de la méthode
“Let him look upon reason as a monarch sitting on the throne of his heart.”
— Al-Ghazali, Some religious and moral teachings of Al-Ghazzali Being brief extracts from his
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
— Pascal, Pascal's Pensées
“A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
“Not to know what happened before one was born, is to be a boy all one's life.”
— Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”
— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason
“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it... this is knowledge.”
— Confucius, The Analects of Confucius (from the Chinese Classics)
“A being than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
— Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, Monologium, and Cur Deus Homo (Deane)
“The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such.”
— Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
“Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed.”
— Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth
“The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth HAPPENS to an idea.”
— William James, Pragmatism A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”
— Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human A Book for Free Spirits, Part 1
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism
“The more we understand particular things, the more do we understand God.”
— Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
“All the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth... have not any subsistence without a mind.”
— George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
— David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
“Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, a Dialogue, Etc.
“Who can (make) the muddy water (clear)? Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear.”
— Laozi, The Tao Teh King, or the Tao and its Characteristics
“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
— Pascal, Pascal's Pensées
“The Universe is either a confusion ravelled and unravelled again, or else a unity compact of order and forethought.”
— Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.”
— Plato, The Republic
“The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.”
— Laozi, The Tao Teh King, or the Tao and its Characteristics
“One path is: That Being doth be, and Non-Being is not: This is the way of Conviction, for Truth follows hard in her footsteps.”
— Parmenides, The fragments of Parmenides
“Whiles into One do all through Love unite; Whiles too the same are rent through hate of Strife.”
— Empedocles, The fragments of Empedocles;
“Other things include a portion of everything, but mind is infinite and self-powerful and mixed with nothing, but it exists alone itself by itself.”
— Anaxagoras, The fragments of Anaxagoras (Fairbanks)
“Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity.”
— Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars)