Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Anthony Collins

Quote by Anthony Collins

“The Use of the Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature and Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming Force or Weakness of the Evidence.”

Quote by Anthony Collins

Create image

Author

Anthony Collins
Anthony Collins

Anthony Collins is an accomplished American football player born on November 2, 1985. He is renowned in the sport for his exceptional skills and leadership on the offensive line. more

You May Also Like

“Those who invalidate reason, ought seriously to consider, 'whether they argue against reason, with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle, that they are laboring to dethrone;' but if they argue without reason, (which, in order to be consistent with themselves, they must do,) they are out of the reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.”

ReasonArgument
Book:Reason the Only Oracle of Man: Or a Compendious System of Natural Religion
Create image

“It was about that time [415 BCE] that the poet Diagoras of Melos was proscribed for atheism, he having declared that the non-punishment of a certain act of iniquity proved that there were no gods. It has been surmised, with some reason, that the iniquity in question was the slaughter of the Melians by the Athenians in 416 BCE, and the Athenian resentment in that case was personal and political rather than religious. For some time after 415 the Athenian courts made strenuous efforts to punish every discoverable case of impiety; and parodies of the Eleusinian mysteries were alleged against Alcibiades and others. Diagoras, who was further charged with divulging the Eleusinian and other mysteries, and with making firewood of an image of Herakles, telling the god thus to perform his thirteenth labour by cooking turnips, became thenceforth one of the proverbial atheists of the ancient world, and a reward of a silver talent was offered for killing him, and of two talents for his capture alive; despite which he seems to have escaped.”

ReasonAtheismPoetGodsDeath PenaltySuperstitionFreethoughtAtheniansHerculesHeraklesAlcibiadesEleusinianDiagorasDiagoras Of MelosImpiety
Book:A Short History Of Freethought: Ancient And Modern
Create image

“Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology has been denounced as the enemy of religion. The twin sisters of terrestrial and celestial physics have thus been joint-heirs of intolerance and persecution—unresisting victims in the crusade which ignorance and fanaticism are ever waging against science. When great truths are driven to make an appeal to reason, knowledge becomes criminal, and philosophers martyrs. Truth, however, like all moral powers, can neither be checked nor extinguished. When compressed, it but reacts the more. It crushes where it cannot expand—it burns where it is not allowed to shine. Human when originally divulged, it becomes divine when finally established. At first, the breath of a rage—at last it is the edict of a god. Endowed with such vital energy, astronomical truth has cut its way through the thick darkness of superstitious times, and, cheered by its conquests, Geology will find the same open path when it has triumphed over the less formidable obstacles of a civilized age.”

ReasonTruthScienceReligionKnowledgeIgnoranceCivilizationPhysicsAstronomyScriptureTriumphIntolerancePersecutionConquestScience And ReligionFanaticismSuperstitionGeologyCriminalScience Vs ReligionPhilosophersMartyrs
Book:More Worlds Than One: The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian
Create image

“Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice . . . . Truth breaks free, science is popularized, and religion totters; soon it will fall, in the course of centuries--that is, tomorrow. . . . In good time we shall only have to deal with reason. [From Bizet, by William Dean. Colier Books, 1962]”

ReasonTruthScienceAmbitionAdvantageInjusticeExploitationViceCloakStrong Vs Weak
Author:Georges Bizet
Create image

“This success permits us to hope that after thirty or forty years of observation on the new Planet [Neptune], we may employ it, in its turn, for the discovery of the one following it in its order of distances from the Sun. Thus, at least, we should unhappily soon fall among bodies invisible by reason of their immense distance, but whose orbits might yet be traced in a succession of ages, with the greatest exactness, by the theory of Secular Inequalities. [Following the success of the confirmation of the existence of the planet Neptune, he considered the possibility of the discovery of a yet further planet.]”

ReasonScienceSpaceDiscoveryMathematicsDistanceMathAstronomyOrbitSolar SystemPlutoNeptune
Author:Urbain Le Verrier
Create image