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Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

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Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

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Lord Byron

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That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

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That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

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Christopher Hitchens

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Use the quotes to provide students with a quick access point into knowledge & the knower, prompt discussions and debates in your classroom, and introduce a range of influential thinkers.

We've arranged these quotes in a way that relates to our 5 Big Question framework for TOK, which is our favoured way of structuring the course. There are other ways to structure TOK, such as the Classic structure.

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Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

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Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

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Thomas Paine

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People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

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People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

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William Butler Yeats

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Henri Matisse

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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

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Henry Thomas Buckle

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If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.

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If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.

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Ken Robinson

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Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

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Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

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Albert Einstein

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Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.

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Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.

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Alfred North Whitehead

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Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

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Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

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Erich Fromm

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Human memory is a marvellous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.

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Human memory is a marvellous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.

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Primo Levi

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Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

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Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

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Ned Rorem

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Every second of every day, our senses bring in way too much data than we can possibly process in our brains.

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Every second of every day, our senses bring in way too much data than we can possibly process in our brains.

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Peter Diamandis

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Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

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Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

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Philip Roth

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Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.

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Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.

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Brené Brown

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Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.

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Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.

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Mary Shelly

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It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

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It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

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Terry Pratchett

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Academics lack perspective. In a debate on whether the world is round, they would argue, ‘No,’ because it’s an oblate spheroid. They suffer from ‘the curse of knowledge’: the inability to imagine what it’s like not to know something that they know.

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Academics lack perspective. In a debate on whether the world is round, they would argue, ‘No,’ because it’s an oblate spheroid. They suffer from ‘the curse of knowledge’: the inability to imagine what it’s like not to know something that they know.

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Steven Pinker

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Truth is often a multiplicity of perspectives, and sometimes the more viewpoints and versions of events there are, the closer the reader gets to an overarching truth.

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Truth is often a multiplicity of perspectives, and sometimes the more viewpoints and versions of events there are, the closer the reader gets to an overarching truth.

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Susan Barker

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Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

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Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

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Herbert Spencer

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The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

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The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

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Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

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Henry David Thoreau

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Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn’t. A sense of humour was provided to console him for what he is.

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Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn’t. A sense of humour was provided to console him for what he is.

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Horace Walpole

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Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

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Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

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C. S. Lewis

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Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

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Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

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Simone Weil

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Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.

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Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.

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William Blake

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Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

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Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

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Joseph Conrad

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The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

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The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

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Thomas Paine

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All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

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All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

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Blaise Pascal

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The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

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The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

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Blaise Pascal

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Aleksandar Hemon

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Memory is the personal journalism of the soul.

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Memory is the personal journalism of the soul.

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Richard Schickel

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Samuel Johnson

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But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

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But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

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George Orwell

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Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

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Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

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Karl Kraus

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Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

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Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

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Elizabeth Bowen

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Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

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Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

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Benjamin Whorf

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The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

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The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein

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You learned the concept ‘pain’ when you learned language.

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You learned the concept ‘pain’ when you learned language.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

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Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

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Martin Heidegger

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Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

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Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

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You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

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Pearl S. Buck

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All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

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All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

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Friedrich Nietzsche

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Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?

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Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?

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Alfred de Vigny

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The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

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The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

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Voltaire

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I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

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I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

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Thomas Jefferson

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A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

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A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

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Thomas Aquinas

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The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

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The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

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Thomas Jefferson

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Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

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Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

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e. e. cummings

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Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

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Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

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Alexander Hamilton

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All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

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All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

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Immanuel Kant

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All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

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All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

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Immanuel Kant

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There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.

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There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.

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Arnold Bennett

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The only real valuable thing is intuition.

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The only real valuable thing is intuition.

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Albert Einstein

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The first and simplest emotion that we discover in the human mind is curiosity.

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The first and simplest emotion that we discover in the human mind is curiosity.

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Edmund Burke

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Nothing can be found in the intellect if previously has not been found in the senses.

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Nothing can be found in the intellect if previously has not been found in the senses.

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Michael Servetus

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What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

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What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

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William Shakespeare

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Diane Ackerman

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The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.

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The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge.

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Rene Descartes

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Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

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Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

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Samuel Adams

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Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.

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Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.

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Janet Fitch

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Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.

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Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.

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Johann Kaspar Lavater

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Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

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Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

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C. S. Lewis

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Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

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Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

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Galileo Galilei

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It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

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It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

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Bertrand Russell

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Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

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Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

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Oscar Wilde

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Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

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Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

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David Hume

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What we hold in our heads – our memory, our feelings, our thoughts, our sense of our own history – is the sum of our humanity.

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What we hold in our heads – our memory, our feelings, our thoughts, our sense of our own history – is the sum of our humanity.

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Richard Eyre

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We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

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We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

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Blaise Pascal

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The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.

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The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.

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Tenzin Gyatso (14th Dalai Lama)

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To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.

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To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.

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Anatole France

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Intuition is a suspension of logic due to impatience.

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Intuition is a suspension of logic due to impatience.

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Rita Mae Brown

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Napoleon Bonaparte

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Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

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Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

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Jonas Salk

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The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.

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The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.

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Rene Descartes