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Rationalism quotes

Rationalism holds that reason plays a primary role in knowledge—often defending a priori insight against pure empiricism.

Overview

Early modern rationalists such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz built metaphysical systems from clear and distinct ideas or necessary truths. The label is comparative: few thinkers deny experience entirely, but they deny that all knowledge reduces to sensory impressions.

Historical notes

Seventeenth-century continental rationalism responds to skepticism and scientific change; later Idealism and analytic a priori debates continue related arguments.

Core ideas

  • Some truths are knowable by reason independent of particular sensory episodes.
  • Mathematics and logic model secure knowledge.
  • Metaphysics can be systematic and demonstrative.
  • Clear and distinct ideas (or sufficient reason) guide inquiry.

Thinkers in this archive

René Descartes , Baruch Spinoza , Karl Popper , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , Maimonides , Saadia Gaon , Judah Halevi

FAQ

What is rationalism in philosophy?

It is the view that reason is a primary source of knowledge, often including a priori truths.

Who are famous rationalists?

Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz are the classic early modern trio.

Where are rationalism quotes?

This page gathers related English passages from the archive’s rationalist labels.

  1. I think, therefore I am.
  2. Once in a lifetime, everything must be doubted.
  3. The things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true.
  4. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
  5. God, or Nature.
  6. We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
  7. the best of all possible worlds
  8. Accept the truth from whatever source it comes.
  9. Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
  10. It is of the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity.
  11. The true end of the state is in reality freedom.
  12. Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
  13. It is easy to obtain confirmations…for nearly every theory—if we look for confirmations.
  14. Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world.
  15. I am, I exist—whenever it is uttered by me, or conceived in the mind, it is necessarily true.
  16. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death.
  17. I shall endeavor not to laugh at human actions, nor to weep over them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
  18. We feel and know by experience that we are eternal.
  19. We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
  20. Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
  21. Nothing is without a reason.
  22. to change my desires rather than the order of the world
  23. Not to laugh at, lament, or detest human actions, but to understand them.
  24. Silence and limiting oneself to the apprehensions of the intellect are more appropriate with regard to God than speech.
  25. The Law as a whole aims at two things: the welfare of the soul and the welfare of the body.
  26. The more the intellect is perfected, the more one draws near to God; proximity is measured by knowledge.
  27. The virtues are means between two extremes; the good character is the mean disposition.
  28. The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all sciences is to know that there is a First Being who brought every existing thing into being.
  29. Prophecy is an overflow from God through the intermediation of the Active Intellect, first to the rational faculty and then to the imaginative faculty.
  30. God has given us the Torah and also intellect, so that we may verify by reason what we have received by tradition.
  31. Inquiry is not forbidden to us; on the contrary, we are commanded to know God by the path of demonstration as far as we can.
  32. The world was created ex nihilo; it did not eternally accompany the Creator.
  33. Divine justice requires that obedience and disobedience not be equal in outcome; reward and punishment follow desert.
  34. I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who led the Israelites out of Egypt with signs and miracles—not in the God of Aristotle.
  35. Speculative philosophy may lead to a First Cause, yet it cannot yield the living God who speaks in history and commandment.
  36. Israel among the nations is like the heart among the organs: it is the most sensitive and the most receptive of the divine influence.