“If arguments could convince humans, there would be no arguments at all.”
Source: Why I Am a Muslim: And a Christian and a Jew
“Zo gaat het altijd voort en altijd rond, het ene maakt plaats voor het ander, en staat ge nu met uw tien geboden in het haar of op uwe vinger te zuigen, de 'waarom' komt ge toch niet te weten.”
Source: Pallieter
“Circe, he says, it will be all right.
It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. ... He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what is means to be alive.”
Source: Circe
“Rationalization is a dialogue with ourselves or with like-minded brains. Reasoning, on the other hand, is an honest and open conversation in which we try to persuade interlocutors who don't necessarily agree with us beforehand with arguments that are as universally valid, coherent, and detailed as possible, while opening ourselves to persuasion.”
Source: How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information
“The lesson we learn from Nightingale's experience is that, as painful as it may sound, we humans are barely able to reason on our own or when surrounded by like-minded people. When we try to reason this way, we end up rationalizing because we use arguments as self-reinforcing virtue signals. And the worst news is that the more intelligent we are and the more information we have access to, the more successful our rationalizations are. This is in part because we're more aware of what the members of the groups -- political parties, churches, and others -- that we belong to think, and we try to align with them. On the other hand, if you are exposed to an opinion and don't know where the opinion comes from, you're more likely to think about it on its merits.”
Source: How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information
“Given these payoffs, endorsing a belief that hasn't passed muster with scientific and fact checking isn't so irrational after all, at least not by the criterion of the immediate affects on the believer. The affects on the society and planet are another matter.”
Source: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
“The same idea was said in a different way by Eric Hoffer, the old dock-walloper, in his book years ago titled The True Believer. Hoffer's theory was that the best fanatics are people who have nothing in their heads but wind, smoke, and emptiness. Then if any idea manages to slip in there, it does not matter how insipid or grotesque that idea might be, it will expand to fill all the available emptiness, and it takes over the individual and all his actions. He cannot hear any voice but his own. He is beyond reason, beyond argumentation. He is right and everyone who does not believe exactly the same as he is wrong.”
Source: Reading for Survival
“What was the purpose, the meaning, the reason for your life; these are questions for here and now, not for when your time is almost over while waiting for the light to fade.”
Source: Life's Impressions
“Why? It is the easiest question to ask and the hardest question to answer.”
“Religion will recede not by atheists shouting condemnation, but by the quiet voice of reason slowly making itself heard.”
Source: Atheism: A Very Short Introduction