Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- White, William Allen

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

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

Baudelaire, Charles

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

Butler, Samuel

There is something peculiarly sinister and insidious in even a charge of disloyalty. Such a charge all too frequently places a strain on the reputation of an individual which is indelible and lasting, regardless of the complete innocence later proved.

O'Brian, John Lord

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.

Reason is like an officer when the king appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; Go is the sun.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.

Devoto, Bernard

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

Frost, Robert

To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.

Hazlitt, William

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

13.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

14.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

15.

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

Lowell, James Russell

16.

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

17.

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

18.

The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.

Yeats, William Butler

19.

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

Morrison, Toni

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Voltaire

24.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

25.

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

26.

Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.

Dryden, John

27.

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

William Shakespeare

28.

Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

29.

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del

30.

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

Bloom, Allan

31.

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

Russell, Bertrand

32.

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

Hegel, Georg

33.

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

Wesley, John

34.

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

Allen, Woody

35.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

36.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

37.

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

38.

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

39.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

40.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

41.

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

Proverb, Welsh

42.

A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

43.

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

Richard, Little

44.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

45.

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

46.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

47.

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

Eastwood, Clint

48.

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

49.

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