Rebecca Goldstein said this quote

No validation of our rationality - of our very sanity - can be accomplished using our rationality itself. How can a person operating within a system of beliefs, including beliefs about beliefs, get outside that system to determine whether it is rational? If your entire system becomes infected with madness, including the very rules by which you reason, then how can you ever reason your way out of your madness?

~ Rebecca Goldstein

(As Plato:) There is nothing superstitious about forcing bad consequences for the hubris of paternalistic utopianism. Humanity should never be frozen into a vision of the best. A creative society must be willing to tolerate some degree of instability because creativity is inherently unstable.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

Conclusions that philosophers first establish by way of torturous reasoning have a way, over time, of leaking into shared knowledge.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

Thinking is the soul speaking to itself.

~ Rebecca Goldstein