Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Cioran, E. M.

Best Quotes about Reason

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

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

Baudelaire, Charles

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

Aragon, Louis

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

Eastwood, Clint

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

Butler, Samuel

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

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

Sophocles

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

White, William Allen

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

10.

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

Voltaire

11.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

16.

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

Hegel, Georg

17.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

18.

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

Bloom, Allan

19.

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

Proverb, Welsh

20.

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

21.

He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

22.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Karl Marx

23.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

24.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

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

26.

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

Russell, Bertrand

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del

30.

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

31.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

32.

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

33.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

34.

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

Yeats, William Butler

35.

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

William Shakespeare

36.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

37.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

38.

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

Morrison, Toni

39.

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

40.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

41.

Everyone has his reasons.

Renoir, Jean

42.

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

Frost, Robert

43.

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

44.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

45.

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

46.

To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.

Hegel, Georg

47.

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

Hazlitt, William

48.

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

Gaskell, Elizabeth

49.

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