Hugh Laurie Quotes

Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

A third ideal that has made its way in the modern world is reliance on reason, especially reason disciplined and enriched by modern science. An eternal basis of human intercommunication is reason.

Facts matter. Science matters. Reason matters. Mitt Romney has shown an inability to respect any of the three. President Barack Obama not only respects them, he relies on them. He is an overwhelming and unquestioned choice to continue as president.

Our society has lost confidence in the power of reason, except perhaps scientific reason.

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.

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.

President Trump, when challenged on facts, says that many people feel the way he does. But feelings should not take the place of reason in matters of public policy.

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.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

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.

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.

I'm a bit of a freak for evidence-based analysis. I strongly believe in data.

Only science and the spirit of seeking truth from facts can save China. I firmly believe in this.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.

He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.

We are speaking to the intelligence of Canadians, not to their emotion.

You must build public policies on reason, on facts.

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