Rudolf Carnap Quotes

I don't really have that many judgements on things, or crazy statements that I feel like I have to put across.

We are rearing a generation of kids who are more equitable and more understanding about the existence of language variety and why it is there.

At the end of the day, every person makes their own evaluation and their own criticism and it's all respectable. I don't want to say who is right and who isn't.

I don't care if it's politics, religion or football. I believe you have to keep opening your mind. And shut your mouth sometimes!

The chief characteristics of the [liberal] attitude are human sympathy, a receptivity to change, and a scientific willingness to follow reason rather than faith.

What we do not understand we have no right to judge

I also learned that a person was not necessarily bad just because you did not agree with him, and that if you believed in something, you had better be prepared to defend it.

As long as we say: "Alright, it is truth for me, and I believe in it and I am ready to fight for it, but I accept that others have different beliefs - and so let me have a closer look at what they believe" - we can gain from our intercourse thanks to our difference, not despite our difference.

For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.

To say the least, a town life makes one more tolerant and liberal in one's judgment of others.

Neither despise nor oppose what thou dost not understand.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged.

No one ever died from an open mind.

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.

I think if religion closes discussion or exchange of ideas or curiosity about other views, it's not true to its core.

The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth.

We must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one...is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.

I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflexion, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in culture.

I am not bigoted enough for a system-and not even for my system.

Let our tribute to the dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.

Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.

All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do.

Listening to others, especially those with whom we disagree, tests our own ideas and beliefs. It forces us to recognize, with humility, that we don't have a monopoly on the truth.