Parmenides Quotes

To follow foolish precedents, and wink With both our eyes, is easier than to think.

Some one has said that most of us don't think, we just occasionally rearrange our prejudices.

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

If some things don't make you lose your sense of reason, then you have none to lose.

Intellect distinguishes between the possible and the impossible; reason distinguishes between the sensible and the senseless. Even the possible can be senseless.

We too often bind ourselves by authorities rather than by the truth.

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.

It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.

That which exercises reason is more excellent than that which does not exercise reason

Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.

Reason alone cannot give you a whole steak, but it sure helps with identifying bologna.

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.

It's very scary to me that people actually think we should just follow our leaders. If we can't learn from our history, we're nowhere.

Activities that seem to represent choices are often inert reproductions of accepted practice.

Wise men argue causes; fools decide them.

I've never been impressed with bureaucratic tradition. I don't like it when the parties come to me and say, 'This is the way that it's always done, judge.' I never found anything in the oath I took or the statutes I was asked to look at that said, 'Judge, stop thinking, because this is the way it was done before.'

I will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I will go to hell with my reason rather than to heaven without it.

Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.

Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

It's a disease of critics that once they've labeled someone, it's very hard to change their perspective. It's laziness.

So much of our lives are defined by habit or what the guy next to us is doing, never wondering and knowing who and what we support with our actions, from the detergent Mom always used, to my favorite dish I make... A lot of my life is unexamined habit.