Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Cioran, E. M.

Best Quotes about Reason

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 whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.

Cioran, E. M.

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 a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one.

Russell, Bertrand

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

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

Luther, Martin

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

12.

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

Hegel, Georg

13.

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

Eastwood, Clint

14.

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

Warburton, William

15.

Everyone has his reasons.

Renoir, Jean

16.

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

Gaskell, Elizabeth

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Allen, Woody

20.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

21.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

22.

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

23.

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

Voltaire

24.

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.

25.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

26.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

27.

A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

28.

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

29.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

30.

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

Sophocles

31.

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

Bloom, Allan

32.

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

Hazlitt, William

33.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

34.

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

35.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

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

Wesley, John

38.

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

39.

To reason about love is to lose reason.

Boufflers

40.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

41.

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

Sterne, Laurence

42.

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

Devoto, Bernard

43.

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

44.

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

Swift, Jonathan

45.

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

William Shakespeare

46.

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

47.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

48.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

49.

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

Lowell, James Russell

50.

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