Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

Bacon, Roger

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Butler, Samuel

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.

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

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Hamilton, Alexander

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

10.

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

Swift, Jonathan

11.

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.

12.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

13.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

14.

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

Sterne, Laurence

15.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

16.

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

17.

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

Cioran, E. M.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

21.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

22.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

23.

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

Dryden, John

24.

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.

25.

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

Morrison, Toni

26.

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

27.

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

Pope, Alexander

28.

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

29.

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

Bloom, Allan

30.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

31.

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

32.

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

Phillips, Wendell

33.

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

Wesley, John

34.

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

Warburton, William

35.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

36.

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

Proverb, Welsh

37.

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

38.

Everyone has his reasons.

Renoir, Jean

39.

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

40.

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

Yeats, William Butler

41.

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

Allen, Woody

42.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

43.

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

Voltaire

44.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

45.

I am never upset for the reason I think.

A Course In Miracles

46.

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

Frost, Robert

47.

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

48.

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

Luther, Martin

49.

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

50.

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

Hazlitt, William