“Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.”
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Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002Related quotes

“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)
Source: 1940s, Beyond the Aesthetics' (1946), pp. 38-39

1990s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1993)
Context: I am also here today as a representative of the millions of people across the globe, the anti-apartheid movement, the governments and organisations that joined with us, not to fight against South Africa as a country or any of its peoples, but to oppose an inhuman system and sue for a speedy end to the apartheid crime against humanity.
These countless human beings, both inside and outside our country, had the nobility of spirit to stand in the path of tyranny and injustice, without seeking selfish gain. They recognised that an injury to one is an injury to all and therefore acted together in defense of justice and a common human decency.

An Old Chaos: Humanism and Flying Saucers (p. 81)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

“Organization seemed to be the key.”
Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)
Context: Organization seemed to be the key. To get huge masses of properly matched men and materials to the right place at the right time in the right order with the swiftness required to even grasp survival — to wrestle an infinitely complex and confusing reality into the abstract shape of victory — organization, it seemed, might even outrank courage as a soldierly virtue.