Billy Corgan Quotes

Neither table pounding nor dreamy euphoria can be permitted to substitute for plausible argument. If impatience is not to be allowed to short-circuit argument with unsupported assertions, reason must be honored above the crude and noisy enthusiasms and antipathies.

We don’t need to ban bad ideas. We just need to criticize bad ideas.

The primary problem is not to provide the public with the knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of .. Rather, the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth.

Logic is the art of convincing us some truth.

I'm a logic monster, if things don't make sense I gotta make sense of them.

We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.

I took the batteries out my mysticism / 
And put them in my thinking cap

Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity.

Opinions don't affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you're rational

I dont agree with those who think that the conflict is simply between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam... To me, the key conflict is between irrational blind faith and rational, logical minds.

I was now prepared to accept any faith so long as it did not demand a direct denial of reason, which would have been a deceit.

We do not respect people's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons. If my reasons are good enough for believing what I believe, you will helplessly believe what I believe. I will give you my reasons and reasons are contagious. That is what it is to be a rational human being.

Practically, Science is true; and Faith is foolish.

You cannot mix up sentiment and reason.

The people I know who seem to make unusual efforts at rationality, are unusually honest, or, failing that, at least have unusually bad social skills.

On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion. Truth seeks light instead of shunning it.

My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument." Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.

My mind is just as open as it ever was, professor. But it's a scientific mind, and there's no place in it for superstitions.

It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why a man may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense.

The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.

This is one of the great social functions of science - to free people from superstition

To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to contemning the command of God.

The argument culture urges us to approach the world - and the people in it - in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as 'both sides'; the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party against the other; the best way to begin an essay is to attack someone; and the best way to show you're really thinking is to criticize.

When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.

If one doesn't value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?