“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte (h/t Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon)

“Providing reasons can help, even when it doesn’t lead to agreement. It maps out the field of options. It helps us understand each other. We keep each other (and ourselves) honest. We learn more of what a claim really involves. Sometimes, it can convince. Inculcate a culture of valuing reasons. The more you are exposed to good reasoning, the more you’ll recognise it, and be able to produce great reasoning of your own. Be prepared to give your reasons, and be curious about the reasons of others. Don’t expect to come to agreement. But be prepared to find some common ground.”

— Greg Restall, Logic and Rationality: Disagreement and Evidence – Why Fact-Checking Units are a Good Thing, even if they don’t lead us to agreement

“I, for one, fear that if we don’t subject religion to such scrutiny now, and work out together whatever revisions and reforms are called for, we will pass on a legacy of ever more toxic forms of religion to our descendants.”

— Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Chapter “Toxic memes”

“There is an ethical component to reason as well, because one’s beliefs are intimately connected to one’s actions. Some of one’s beliefs are themselves normative – beliefs about what is good and right, about whose life is valuable and why and in what manner (see abortion and euthanasia debates). And factual beliefs are also important, since how we understand the world in which we are acting shapes our actions every bit as much as our values and ends.

If one gives up reason in the formation of some of one’s beliefs, one gives up the only access to truth we have. Humans don’t have any perceptual capacity to immediately discern truth, the way we immediately discern color and shape (if the lighting is good and our eyesight is in good order). The closest we can get is to justify our beliefs. Faith is not justification, it is the suspension of all standards for justification. Faith declares that some beliefs – these important ones right at the center of my world-view that shape how I see many other things – need not be justified at all.”

— George M. Felis, Faith is a Moral Failing (2006)

“The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.”

— Edward Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), p. 262

“All religions are dangerous, because the epistemic attitude of faith compromises the link between our beliefs about reality and what reality is actually like.”

— Phil Torres

“It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe.”

— Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (1986)

“Sometimes the consequences of holding a belief matter more than its truth.”

— Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (2002), p. 97

“Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.”

— Thomas Huxley

“I believe that most of us have false beliefs about our own nature, and our identity over time, and that, when we see the truth, we ought to change some of our beliefs about what we have reason to do.”

— Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984), p. ix

“Philosophy is still young, and the human capacity for reasoning is strong. In a scrutable world, truth may be within reach.”

— David Chalmers, Constructing the World (2012)

“[B]etter the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.”

— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, (1995), p. 191

“Ethics is thinking about what the perfect world looks like, and then trying to make ours look more like it.”

— Lukas Gloor

“We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.”

— Henri Poincaré

“[W]e don’t just need knowledge per se but specifically ethically reflective knowledge that can slowly, carefully, and circumspectly decide how to move ahead. [O]ur slogan shouldn’t be just “more intelligence” but instead something like “more wisdom.””

— Brian Tomasik, Charity Cost-Effectiveness in an Uncertain World (Foundational Research Institute)

“The universe is what it is, not what I choose that it should be. If it is indifferent to human desires, as it seems to be; if human life is a passing episode, hardly noticeable in the vastness of cosmic processes; if there is no superhuman purpose, and no hope of ultimate salvation, it is better to know and acknowledge this truth than to endeavor, in futile self-assertion, to order the universe to be what we find comfortable.”

— Bertrand Russell, Understanding History (1943), Chapter II: The Value of Free Thought, p. 52

“No great ethical conundrum can be answered in a way that appeases all moral philosophers—or all people—easily. But by carefully thinking through the self-doubt, logic, and instinct bound up in morality, it’s certain that, at the very least, the decisions we reach won’t be shallow.”

— Olivia Goldhill, An Oxford philosopher’s moral crisis can help us learn to question our instincts (Quartz, October 15, 2017)

“The mind has its illusions as the sense of sight; and in the same manner that the sense of feeling corrects the latter, reflection and calculation correct the former.”

— Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1952)

“We urgently need to find ways to push scientific and technological progress in directions that are likely to bring us good, and away from those directions that spell doom. This cannot be done if we stick to the erroneous view that all such progress is good for us. The first thing we need is to be able to distinguish those advances whose potential is most in the direction of prosperity and human flourishing from those whose potential is more in the direction of destruction and doom, and we need to find safe ways to handle those technologies that come with elements of both. Our ability to do so today is very limited, my ambition with this book is to draw attention to the problem, so that we can work together to improve, and avoid running blindfolded at full speed into a dangerous future.”

— Olle Häggström, Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity, Preface

“This is what a philosopher’s supposed to do, follow the argument wherever it leads[.] You’re supposed to follow it even if it leads somewhere you don’t want to go.”

— Jeff McMahan interview quote An Oxford philosopher’s moral crisis can help us learn to question our instincts (Quartz, October 15, 2017)

“The sword of science is double-edged. Its awesome power forces on all of us, including politicians, a new responsibility – more attention to the long-term consequences of technology, a global and transgenerational perspective, an incentive to avoid easy appeals to nationalism and chauvinism. Mistakes are becoming too expensive.”

— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), p. 15

“The mind does not require filling like a bottle but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling.”

— Plutarch, Moralia: On Listening to Lectures (100 AD)

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

— Isaac Asimov

“I have only met a couple of people in my life who really understand how to ‘think’; not fantasize or free-associate unconsciously, but volitionally initiate a process that solves a problem.”

— Sydney Pollack, Preface (Minghella on Minghella, 2005)

“People are embraced or condemned according to their beliefs, so one function of the mind may be to hold beliefs that bring the belief-holder the greatest number of allies, protectors, or disciples, rather than beliefs that are most likely to be true.”

— Steven Pinker, Language, Cognition, and Human Nature

“Irrationalities give rise to vulnerabilities that can be exploited by others. Free market forces then drive corporations and popular culture to specifically try to create situations that will trigger irrational human behavior because it is extremely profitable.”

— Steve Omohundro, The Basic AI Drives

“Rationality is costly, in that it prevents us from believing whatever we want to believe.”

— Michael Huemer, The Irrationality of Politics (TEDxMileHighSalon, 2012)

“It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold.”

— Peter Singer, Practical Ethics: Third edition (2011)

“Moral false-positives (failing to recognize an unethical behavior as unethical) are probably more costly than false-negatives (failing to recognize an ethical behavior as ethical). But moral false-negatives are costly, too.”

— Hugh Ristik, LessWrong (February 8, 2011)

What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.

— Eugene Gendlin

“[R]eason is more than a neutral problem-solving tool. It is more like an escalator: once we get on it, we are liable to be taken to places that we never expected to reach.”

— Peter Singer, Are humans getting better? (2012)

“Philosophers should not only interpret our beliefs; when they are false, they should change them.”

— Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984), p. x

“Non-religious Ethics is at a very early stage. We cannot yet predict whether, as in Mathematics, we will reach agreement. Since we cannot know how Ethics will develop, it is not irrational to have high hopes.”

— Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984)

“Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling.”

— Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 281

“I persist in thinking that the puzzle of ethics is starting to come together, and that few, if any, pieces are missing.”

— Peter Singer, A Companion to Ethics (1991), p. 545

That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.

— P. C. Hodgell, Seeker’s Mask (1994)