Quote

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 reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives.

Morris Raphael Cohen

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Morris Raphael Cohen
Age: 66 †
Born: 1880
Born: July 25
Died: 1947
Died: January 28
Philosopher
Мінск
Rather
Rejects
Dogmas
Upon
Liberalism
Insists
Find
Alternatives
Plausible
Self
Seeking
Propositions
Evidence
Dogma
Attitude
Reject
Support
Questioning
Possible
Evident

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Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature.
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Law must be viewed as a formless mass of isolated decisions.
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The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt.
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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 in small villages.
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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 always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability.
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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 at which they arrive, and that their primary concern is to follow their premises to their logical conclusions.
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The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic.
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If a philosophic theory is once ruled out of court, no one can tell when it will appear again.
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To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority.
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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 diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views.
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Again, both literature and philosophy work by appealing to certain reigning idols.
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Wisdom is not to be obtained from textbooks, but must be coined out of human experience in the flame of life.
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