Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Reason

What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational.

Hegel, Georg

I tried being reasonable, I didn't like it.

Eastwood, Clint

As if reasoning were any kind of writing or talking which tends to convince people that some doctrine or measure is true and right.

Beecher, Catharine Esther

Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.

Allen, Woody

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

Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.

Lawrence, D. H.

Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.

Fromm, Erich

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

Morrison, Toni

Write on my gravestone: Infidel, Traitor.--infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.

Phillips, Wendell

10.

I'll not listen to reason. Reason always means what someone else has got to say.

Gaskell, Elizabeth

11.

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

12.

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

Cioran, E. M.

13.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

14.

Everyone has his reasons.

Renoir, Jean

15.

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

Voltaire

16.

It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.

Disraeli, Benjamin

17.

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

Sophocles

18.

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

19.

Do not banish reason for inequality; but let your reason serve to make the truth appear where it seems hid, and hide the false seems true.

William Shakespeare

20.

Reason gains all people by compelling none.

Hill, Aaron

21.

It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

22.

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

Swift, Jonathan

23.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

24.

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

William Shakespeare

25.

O reason, reason, abstract phantom of the waking state, I had already expelled you from my dreams, now I have reached a point where those dreams are about to become fused with apparent realities: now there is only room here for myself.

Aragon, Louis

26.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

27.

There are strange flowers of reason to match each error of the senses.

Aragon, Louis

28.

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

29.

To reason about love is to lose reason.

Boufflers

30.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

31.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

32.

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.

33.

If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

Chesterfield, Lord

34.

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

Russell, Bertrand

35.

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

Frost, Robert

36.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

37.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

38.

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

Sterne, Laurence

39.

Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic.

Abbagnano, Nicola

40.

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

Luther, Martin

41.

What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. 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 unused.

Shakespeare, William

42.

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

Lowell, James Russell

43.

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

44.

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

45.

Reason is the wise man's guide, example the fool's.

Proverb, Welsh

46.

People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

47.

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del