Morris Raphael Cohen Quotes

25 quotes in 417 categories

• Liberalism regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situation, in which there is no guarantee that the new will…
• By no amount of reasoning can we altogether eliminate all contingency from our world. Moreover, pure speculation alone will not enable us to get a…
• All logic texts are divided into two parts. In the first part, on deductible logic, the fallacies are explained; in the second part, on inductive…
• A creative element is surely present in all great systems, and it does not seem possible that all sympathy or fundamental attitudes of will can…
• Again, both literature and philosophy work by appealing to certain reigning idols.
• Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life…
• If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good.
• Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims.
• If a philosophic theory is once ruled out of court, no one can tell when it will appear again.
• It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be…
• Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist.
• Law is a formless mass of isolated decisions.
• Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature.
• The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic.
• To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority.
• Wisdom is not to be obtained from textbooks, but must be coined out of human experience in the flame of life.
• The method of exposition which philosophers have adopted leads many to suppose that they are simply inquiries, that they have no interest in the conclusions…
• It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by…
• Small groups or communities may be far more oppressive to the individual than larger ones. Men are in many ways freer in large cities than…
• Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas - an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to…

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