Santiago Ramon y Cajal Quotes

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.

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.

Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.

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

The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed.

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things.

The choicest gift of God to man, the gift of reason; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason; as if man could give reason to himself.

The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact.

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

The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.

The mind which is most capable of receiving impressions is very often the least capable of drawing conclusions.

We know you have a great mind and all, Mother, but you don’t have much sense.

The exercise of reason is not available only to specialists; it is accessible to everyone.

I dont agree with those who think that the conflict is simply between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam... To me, the key conflict is between irrational blind faith and rational, logical minds.

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

My mind is just as open as it ever was, professor. But it's a scientific mind, and there's no place in it for superstitions.

Reason cannot show itself more reasonable than to cease reasoning on things above reason.

To accept reason is impossible if you don't already possess it.

Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.

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

Truth does not demand belief.

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.

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

Just in ratio as knowledge increases, faith diminishes.