Iain McGilchrist Quotes

The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives.

The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism.

Knowledge consists in understanding the evidence that establishes the fact, not in the belief that it is a fact.

Knowledge is justified belief.

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

Our reason arises, at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations and human testimonies.

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

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

Convictions do not imply reasons.

The scientist insists on verification; the religious theologian does not; the philosopher sometimes does and sometimes does not

Do not believe just because you want to believe.

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

All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?

Can the knowledge deriving from reason even begin to compare with knowledge perceptible by sense?

I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God.

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.

The belief of our Reason is an Exercise of Faith, and Faith is an Act of Reason.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.

The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself.