Emanuel Swedenborg Quotes

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.

Science is a philosophy of discovery; intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance... Something fundamamental is going on in people's minds when they confront things they don't understnd.

That great philosopher anonymous once said, never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.

Science intensifies religious truth by cleansing it of ignorance and superstition.

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.

Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.

Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.

A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.

Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance.

Basically, I realized I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six to and thirty-seven known as stupidity. It's when you don't know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don't even have a philosophy about all the things you don't know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight.

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.

Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.

The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth.

The advantages of philosophy? That I am able to hold converse with myself.

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an "intellectual" - find out how he feels about astrology.

All the progress we have made in philosophy ... is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom.

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.

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

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

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