The Humanist Frame (1961) p. 18 <!--"The Evolutionary Vision" (1960) p. 252 -->
Context: In the evolutionary pattern of thought, there is neither need nor room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion.
“The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts:
Those with brains, but no religion,
And those with religion, but no brains.”
As quoted in The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1984) by Amin Maalouf, p. 37
Variant translations:
The world holds two classes of men; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern (1906) by John Mackinnon Robertson, Vol. I, Ch. VIII: Freethought under Islam, p. 269
The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.
This form of the statement has been most commonly misatributted — to Avicenna, in A Rationalist Encyclopaedia: A Book of Reference on Religion, Philosophy, Ethics, and Science (1950) by Joseph McCabe, p. 43, and later to Averroes, in The Atheist World (1991) by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, p. 46.
Original: اِثْنَانِ أَهْلُ الْأَرْضِ ذُو عَقْلٍ بِلَا دِينٍ وَآخَرُ دَيِّنٌ لَا عَقْلَ لَهُ
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Al-Maʿarri 5
Medieval Arab philosopher 973–1057Related quotes
“Religion is a psychic disease of the brain.”
1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)
“He was one of those people with lots of intelligence but no brains”
Original works of Rabindranath Vol. 24 page 375, Vishwa Bharti; 1982.
John Knox, A Vindication of the Doctrine that the Sacrifice of the Mass is Idolatry http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/vindicat.htm, 1550; as quoted in Selected Writings of John Knox: Public Epistles, Treatises, and Expositions to the Year 1559
“There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.”
Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire