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Quote by Michel Foucault

“Through Sade and Goya, the Western world received the possibility of transcending its reason in violence....”

Quote by Michel Foucault

Book:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

Work

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

This book delves into the societal and medical perspectives on mental illness from the 17th to the 19th centuries, examining the evolution of attitudes towards the mentally ill and the development of psychiatric practices. more

Author

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher known for his critical analysis of knowledge, power, and discourse. His work covered a wide range of topics, including madness, prisons, sexuality, archaeology of knowledge, and biopolitics. Foucault's ideas have had a profound impact on postmodernism, critical theory, and cultural studies. more

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“Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition.”

Reason Knowledge Ignorance Superstition

Book:Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

“I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument.”

Reason Argument Dispute Negotiations

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“There is nothing so consistent with reason as this denial of reason.”

Reason Unreason

Book:Pensées

Source: Pensées

“All order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal — a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world — two snake pits.”

Reason Order Illusion

Book:Grendel

Source: Grendel

“To act morally is not to act out of fear of punishment; it is not to act as one is commanded to act. Rather, it is to act as one ought to act. And how one ought to act is not dependent upon anyone's power, even if the power be Divine.”

Reason Atheism Morality

Author:Steven M. Cahn

“Ideals make reason inaccessible.”

Author:Floriano Martins

“Since it has pleased God to endue us with some capacity of reason, to the end we may not, like brutes, be servilely subject and enslaved to the laws common to both, but that we should by judgment and a voluntary liberty apply ourselves to them, we ought, indeed, something to yield to the simple authority of nature, but not suffer ourselves to be tyrannically hurried away and transported by her; reason alone should have the conduct of our inclinations. I, for my part, have a strange disgust for those propensions that are started in us without the mediation and direction of the judgment.”

Reason Rationality

Book:Essays

Source: Essays

“To irrational principles, one cannot be loyal. Ideas that are not derived from reality cannot be consistently practiced in reality. --as quoted by Leonard Peikoff in "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”

Reason Objectivism Rational Thought

Author:Ayn Rand

“There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.”

Reason Samuel Johnson

Author:Samuel Johnson

“The vainglory of wishing to understand is dangerous, immoral and, above all, old-fashioned. The modern way – perhaps the final way - is to say: Go forward, without knowing why, as quickly as possible, towards an unknown goal! To act and think are opposites which identify one only in the Absolute. To accomplish all one's movements – of the head, the arms, the legs – without ever quite attaining the status of a puppet, but with a certainty that gives one a feeling of rightness: that is what is nowadays held up as the ideal. Be citizens of Universal activity! Forget to be conscious of ourselves! The blind horse gallops without hesitation, not knowing where it is going, not caring where it has been: so let up put out our eyes!”

Reason Action Understanding Activity

Author:Remy de Gourmont