Motivational Quotes

Reason

Let reason govern desire.

- Cicero, Marcus T.

Best Quotes about Reason

Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons for it afterwards.

Petersen, Soren F.

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

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

Frost, Robert

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

Dryden, John

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

Luther, Martin

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

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

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.

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

Morrison, Toni

12.

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

Eastwood, Clint

13.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

14.

Reason gains all people by compelling none.

Hill, Aaron

15.

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

Hazlitt, William

16.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

17.

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.

18.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

19.

Everyone has his reasons.

Renoir, Jean

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.

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

Yeats, William Butler

22.

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

White, William Allen

23.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

24.

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

William Shakespeare

25.

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

Sophocles

26.

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

Pope, Alexander

27.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

28.

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

29.

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

Sterne, Laurence

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

34.

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

35.

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

Bacon, Roger

36.

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

37.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

38.

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

Allen, Woody

39.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

40.

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

41.

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

Richard, Little

42.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

43.

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.

44.

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

Devoto, Bernard

45.

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

Cioran, E. M.

46.

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

Bloom, Allan

47.

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

Warburton, William

48.

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

49.

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

50.

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