This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Religion is devoted and loyal commitment to the best that reason and insight can discover. The liberal understands what loyalty means as the authoritarian never can." - Julius Seelye Bixler
"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare. My business is to create." - William Blake
"To be human is to long for something more, something beyond us. Fulfillment, peace, and lasting happiness, for no apparent reason, seem to have evaded us. We believe that we are meant for happiness and made for joy. Pain and suffering are somehow a mistake that should not be part of life." - Joe Boot
"Reason will find God, but reason will find, too, the need to transcend reason, the promise of more than reason can offer." - George Brantl
"The attraction of one creature for another, even when condemned by reason for its passionate origin, is always worthy of respect, because it reveals to us something of the order of creation." - Albert Carré
"Man in the present state of society appears to me to be ore corrupted by his reason than his passions." - Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
"Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all." - Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
"Love is a desire of the whole being to be united to some thing, or some being, felt necessary to its completeness, by the most perfect means that nature permits, and reason dictates." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment – originating in the social instinct, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in alter times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
"The universal and the transcendent Cause of all things is neither without life, nor without reason and intelligence; nor is he a body, nor has he form or shape, quality, quantity or weight; nor has he any localized, visible or tangible existence… He suffers no change, corruption, division, privation or flux; none of these things can either be identified with or attributed to him." - Dionysus NULL
"I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence - as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." - Albert Einstein
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their primitive forms are accessible to our minds – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitutes true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man." - Albert Einstein
"Reason and revelation cannot be in conflict because they are on different sides of the gap; revelation is part of that to which we react while reason is part of our reaction." - Nels F. S. Ferré, fully Nels Fredrick Solomon Ferré
"Never trust the man who hath reason to suspect that you know he hath injured you." - Henry Fielding
"Anger is never without a Reason." - Benjamin Franklin
"Without a direct causal link between brain processes and consciousness, there is no persuasive reason to believe that consciousness emerged from the brain, or through natural selection, at all." - Elio Frattaroli
"Faith does not contradict reason but transcends it." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Reason inspired by love of truth is the only eye with which man can see the spiritual heavens above us." - Charles Edward Garman
"Of all the bigotries that ravage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. It has no basis in reason, it is not rooted in faith, it aspires to no ideal." - Lloyd George, fully David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
"To study is to live… The discipline of learning provides cohesion, a clear and compelling reason for being." - Kenneth Hanson, aka Ken Hanson
"If we do discover a complete [unified] theory [of the universe], it should be in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God." - Stephen Hawking
"There is no inherent authority of `truth’ to any concept except for the subjective value ascribed to it. Credibility is a subjective decision and purely experiential and indefinable. What is convincing to one person may be dismissed as nonsense by another. The realization and knowingness of God is radically and purely subjective. There is not even the hypothetical possibility that reason could arrive at Truth. Truth is knowable only by virtue of the identity of being it." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"Detachment of doctrine from devotion, detachment of reason from reverence, of scrutiny from the sense of the ineffable reduces God as a challenge to a logical hypothesis… God is relevant only when overwhelmingly urgent." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Extreme rationalism may be defined as the failure of reason to understand itself." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Faith is sensitiveness to what transcends nature, knowledge and will, awareness of the ultimate, alertness to the holy dimension of all reality. Faith is a force in man, lying deeper than the stratum of reason and its nature cannot be defined in abstract, static terms. To have faith is not to infer the beyond from the wretched here, but to perceive the wonder that is here and to be stirred by the desire to integrate the self into the holy order of living. It is not a deduction but an intuition, not a form of knowledge, of being convinced without proof, but the attitude of mind toward ideas whose scope is wider than its own capacity to grasp." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Courage has need of reason, but it is not reason’s child; it springs from deeper strata." - Herman Hesse
"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"Nobuddy ever listened t’ reason on a’ empty stomach." - Kin Hubbard, pen name for Frank McKinney Hubbard
"Any conflict which prevents the personality from attaining wholeness is a hindrance: all taboos against considering any part of the universe in relation to man and his destiny are hindrances; so, too, are all restrictions upon the free use of reason, or the free appeal of conscience. In other words, any religion which is not an affirmation of the ultimate value of truth and knowledge, beauty and its expression, and goodness and moral action, which ever sets itself up against these, is in that respect a false, low and incomplete religion." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"It is our duty… to place our whole tumultuous life of feeling and will under the joint guidance of reverence and reason." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason why we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying." - William James
"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." - Thomas Jefferson
"The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinion than that they are in fashion." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Reason cannot injure true Religion, for true Religion is reason." - Morris Joseph
"This is the reason why we have no ease of heart or soul, for we are seeking our rest in trivial things which cannot satisfy... He [alone] is true rest... Nothing less will satisfy us." - Julian of Norwich NULL
"Deprivation of the right of association with his fellow-men is the basic and fundamental reason for the immorality of racial segregation." - Joseph T. Leonard
"Revelation does not give anything to the human race which human reason, if left to itself, would not attain; but it has given and still gives the most important of these things earlier." - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
"`Tis not without reason that [Man] seeks out and is willing to join in Society with others who are already united or have a mind to unite for the mutual Preservation of their Lives, Liberties and Estates, which I call by the general Name, Property. The great and chief end, therefore, of Men’s uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of Property." - Abraham Lincoln
"Take all of this book upon reason that you can, and the balance, upon faith and you will live and die a better man." - Abraham Lincoln
"He that takes away reason, to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both." - John Locke
"One great Reason why many Children abandon themselves wholly to silly sports and trifle away all their time insipidly is because they found their Curiosity baulk’d and their Enquiries neglected. But had they been treated with more kindness and Respect and their Questions answered, as they should, to their Satisfaction, I doubt not but they would have taken more Pleasure in Learning and improving their Knowledge, wherein there would be still Newness and Variety, which is what they are delighted with, than in returning over and over to the same Play and Playthings." - John Locke
"The peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses. Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, “Do this”; reason, judgment, prudence say “It is your peril if you do!” One desire fights against another. And so the man is rent asunder. There must be the harmonizing of all the being if there is to be real rest of spirit." - Alexander Maclaren
"If each man relies on his individual reason for his religious beliefs, the result will be anarchy of belief or the annihilation of religious sovereignty." - Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre