B 730; Variant translation: All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
Variant: All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.
Source: Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
Section 2 : Religion
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
“Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.”
Rien n'est plus contraire à la religion et au clergé qu'une tête sensée et raisonnable. — Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, Théologie portative, ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne (1768): Folie
Misattributed
"A Man of the People", p. 107
Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)
Eryximachus, p. 46
L'Âme et la danse (1921)
“Understanding the knowledge and wisdom of the Qur'an is by far, higher than memorizing.”
Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol. 4, p. 418
Regarding the Qur'an
“Nothing hath an uglier Look to us than Reason, when it is not of our side.”
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections
Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), IV
Context: Well, granted that it was only a dream, yet the sensation of the love of those innocent and beautiful people has remained with me for ever, and I feel as though their love is still flowing out to me from over there. I have seen them myself, have known them and been convinced; I loved them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh, I understood at once even at the time that in many things I could not understand them at all … But I soon realised that their knowledge was gained and fostered by intuitions different from those of us on earth, and that their aspirations, too, were quite different. They desired nothing and were at peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it, because their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher and deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others how to love, while they without science knew how to live; and that I understood, but I could not understand their knowledge.
Aids to Reflection, "Moral and Religious Aphorisms," Aphorism 25 http://books.google.com/books?id=hEbwXNWXoBoC&q=%22He+who+begins+by+loving+Christianity+better+than+truth+will+proceed+by+loving+his+own+sect+or+church+better+than+Christianity+and+end+in+loving+himself+better+than+all%22&pg=PA74#v=onepage (1873)
