Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. IV Section I - Speculation on the Doctrine of the Depravity of Human Reason
“The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument. … If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will then argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true. … You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your arguments and refute them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits.”
Pilgrim’s Regress 63
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)
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Clive Staples Lewis 272
Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963Related quotes
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 48
Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter II Planning a Model World
“Nor can anyone rightly choose his own doctrine from all, unless he has first made himself familiar with all of them. Moreover, there is in each school something distinctive, which it has not in common with any other.”
Nec potest ex omnibus sibi recte propriam selegisse, qui omnes prius familiariter non agnoverit. Adde quod in una quaque familia est aliquid insigne, quod non sit ei commune cum caeteris.
30. 196-197
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)
“Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.”
The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), ch. 2