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If it seems shocking to some that scientists are not cold computers but human beings with different preferences, dispositions, skills and temperaments then they must have a very strange idea of how people think. Science is indeed a rational pursuit par excellence. But it does violence to the notion of rationality if we pretend that it is not a complicated, somewhat messy capacity.

— Julian Baggini The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (2016)

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More quotes by Julian Baggini

Love is indeed, at root, the product of the firings of neurons and release of hormones.

To be truly rational we need to acknowledge the limits of our rationality: nothing is more irrational than an unwarranted faith in reason.

The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (2016)

If the house on the lake can become a new iteration of a philosophical retreat, that would pay homage to its first owner much more than any number of selfie-snapping visitors could.

Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world.

Philosophical autobiographies do much more than simply reveal the personalities and prejudices of their authors, however. They provide striking examples of just why such factors inevitably colour our thinking beyond the biographical.

The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (2016)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Julian Baggini (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.