Motivational Quotes

Reason

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

- Lowell, James Russell

Best Quotes about Reason

Man always has two reasons for the things he does; the logical one and the real one.

Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.

Cioran, E. M.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

Butler, Samuel

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Hamilton, Alexander

A man always has two reasons for doing anything -- a good reason and the real reason.

Morgan, John Pierpont

There is really nothing more to say except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

Morrison, Toni

Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.

Luther, Martin

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unus'd.

William Shakespeare

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

Wilde, Oscar

10.

Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth.

Warburton, William

11.

I got fame and fortune, and I lost my sense of reasoning.

Richard, Little

12.

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

Browne, Sir Thomas

13.

Too much sensibility creates unhappiness and too much insensibility creates crime.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

14.

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

Frost, Robert

15.

He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

16.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

17.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

18.

Many that are not mad have, sure, more lack of reason.

William Shakespeare

19.

Our passion and principles are constantly in a frenzy, but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.

Sterne, Laurence

20.

Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one.

Russell, Bertrand

21.

Reason gains all people by compelling none.

Hill, Aaron

22.

Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice.

Bloom, Allan

23.

Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

24.

His reasons are as two grains of wheat his in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

William Shakespeare

25.

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

26.

Everyone has his reasons.

Renoir, Jean

27.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

Voltaire

28.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

29.

We are a rebellious nation. Our whole history is treason; our blood was attained before we were born; our creeds were infidelity to the mother church; our constitution treason to our fatherland.

Parker, Theodore

30.

To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.

Hegel, Georg

31.

Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information -- never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good -- he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world.

Plato

32.

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.

Havel, Vaclav

33.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

34.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

Shaw, George Bernard

35.

Treason is like diamonds; there is nothing to be made by the small trader.

Jerrold, Douglas William

36.

Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

Baudelaire, Charles

37.

That proves you are unusual, returned the Scarecrow; and I am convinced the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.

Baum, Lyman Frank

38.

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

39.

The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.

Sophocles

40.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.

Voltaire

41.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

42.

To reason about love is to lose reason.

Boufflers

43.

Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.

Bronte, Charlotte

44.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

Swift, Jonathan

45.

Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies reason.

Gandhi, Mahatma

46.

Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.

White, William Allen

47.

Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.

Wesley, John

48.

On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

Pope, Alexander

49.

The person who is master of their passions is reason's slave.

Connolly, Cyril

50.

Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!

Addison, Joseph