Peter Medawar Quotes

The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

Far from being demeaning to human spiritual values, scientific rationalism is the crowning glory of the human spirit.

Well, logos is science or reason, something that helps us to function practically and effectively in the world, and it must therefore be closely in tune and reflect accurately the realities of the world around us.

There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible and those who believe that 'belief' must be discarded and replaced by 'the scientific method.

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.

Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidiest and most pernicious illusion.

The only hope I can see for the future depends on a wiser and braver use of the reason, not a panic flight from it.

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.

Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be NOT magic.

It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.

I believe in the religion of reason -- the gospel of this world; in the development of the mind, in the accumulation of intellectual wealth, to the end that man may free himself from superstitious fear, to the end that he may take advantage of the forces of nature to feed and clothe the world.

Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.

We have more than two options. A critique of reason does not have to be a call for the return of superstition and arbitrary power. Our problems do not lie with reason itself but with our obsessive treatment of reason as an absolute value. Certainly it is one of our qualities, but it functions positively only when balanced and limited by the others.

It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.

The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.

If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.

Once your faith persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares absurd, beware, lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life.

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.

There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.

It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.

This then is the age of reason.

Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason.