“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”

— Thomas Paine

Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." by Thomas Paine?

Thomas Paine photo

Thomas Paine262

English and American political activist 1737–1809

Related quotes

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”

Thomas Paine book The American Crisis

The Crisis No. V
Source: 1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)

“Reproof is a medicine like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered it will do harm instead of good.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

“Today only the person who no longer believes in a happy ending, only he who has consciously renounced it, is able to live. A happy century does not exist; but there are moments of happiness, and there is freedom in the moment.”

Ernst Jünger book The Glass Bees

The Glass Bees (1957)

“There is no legitimate use whatsoever for marijuana. This is not medicine. This is bogus witchcraft. It has no place in medicine, no place in pain relief…”

Bob Barr (1948) Republican and Libertarian politician

"Drug War Chronicle" (17 May 2002), as quoted in "Barr Booed for Anti-Pot Remarks in Home District Event" http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/237/barrbooed.shtml. <br class="br">2000s, 2002

“The objection I have to the whipping-post is that it is a punishment which cannot be inflicted by a gentleman. The person who administers the punishment must, of necessity, be fully as degraded as the person who receives it.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.

“We honor revelation too highly to make it the antagonist of reason, or to believe that it calls us to renounce our highest powers.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

"Unitarian Christianity", an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819)

“What use was it to argue with a little idiot like this? Indeed, peasants never do argue; they use abuse.”

Ouida (1839–1908) British novelist

Source: Two Little Wooden Shoes (1874), Chapter I

“The real reason that physicians are rotten investors is that it never occurs to them that finance is a science, just like medicine.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Introduction, p. ix.
The Four Pillars of Investing (2002)

“[…] the virtues of a medicine depend less upon its intrinsic properties and powers than on the sagacity of the physician who administers it; just as the efficiency of firearms depends less upon the explosives and the missile they contain than on the judgment and accuracy of aim of the man who discharges them.”

Alfred Stillé book The Essentials of the Art of Medicine

The Essentials of the Art of Medicine. 1897. p 26.

“When the man governed by self-interest, the god of this world, does not renounce it but merely refines it by the use of reason and extends it beyond the constricting boundary of the present, he is represented (Luke XVI, 3-9) as one who, in his very person [as servant], defrauds his master [self- interest] and wins from him sacrifices in behalf of “duty.””

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Book IV, Part 1, Section 2, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

Related topics