Terry Goodkind Quotes

Common sense is very uncommon.

It's called common sense, but it's not common. Most people don't have it.

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community?

Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it; it will counsel you best.

There is absolutely no common sense, it is common non-sense.

Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.

Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

Hence reason also demands that, since our thoughts cannot all be true because we are not wholly perfect, what truth they do possess must inevitably be found in the thoughts we have when awake, rather than in our dreams.

The indispensability of reason does not imply that individual people are always rational or are unswayed by passion and illusion. It only means that people are capable of reason, and that a community of people who choose to perfect this faculty and to exercise it openly and fairly can collectively reason their way to sounder conclusions in the long run. As Lincoln observed, you can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.

A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.

Rationalism doesn't require "belief," only observation. The real, measurable world doesn't care what you believe.

Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them.

Truth does not demand belief.

It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.

An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.

Philosophy means thinking things out for oneself. Ultimately, there can be only one true philosophy, since reason is one and we all live in the same world.

The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.

Justice and truth are the common ties of society

Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales

If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.

To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to contemning the command of God.

Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that 'to feel' is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality.

Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason.