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An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.
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There is a limit where the intellect fails and breaks down, and this limit is where the questions concerning God and freewill and immortality arise.
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I feel a complete thirst for knowledge and an eager unrest to go further in it as well as satisfaction at every acquisition. There was a time when I believed that this alone could constitute the honor of mankind, and I had contempt for the ignorant rabble who know nothing.
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It is presumed that there exists a great unity in nature, in respect of the adequacy of a single cause to account for many different kinds of consequences.
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If we could see ourselves... as we really are, we should see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures, our community which neither began at birth nor will end with the death of the body.
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There is nothing higher than reason.
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Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority... Supere aude! Dare to use your own understanding!is thus the motto of the Enlightenment.
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I assert that, in any particular natural science, one encounters genuine scientific substance only to the extent that mathematics is present.
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He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray.
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Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.
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The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him.
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Thinking in pictures precedes thinking in words.
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. . . as to moral feeling, this supposed special sense, the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws: and besides, feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has any one a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings. . . .