Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Eastwood, Clint

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Phillips, Wendell

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

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

White, William Allen

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

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

Swift, Jonathan

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

Hegel, Georg

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

Cioran, E. M.

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.

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

10.

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

Warburton, William

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Hamilton, Alexander

14.

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

Lowell, James Russell

15.

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

16.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

17.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

18.

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

Yeats, William Butler

19.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

20.

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

Sterne, Laurence

21.

Everyone has his reasons.

Renoir, Jean

22.

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

23.

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

Russell, Bertrand

24.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

25.

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

26.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

27.

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

28.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

29.

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

Wesley, John

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 the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

32.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

33.

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

34.

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

Voltaire

35.

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Gaskell, Elizabeth

39.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

40.

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

Hazlitt, William

41.

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

Voltaire

42.

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

43.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

44.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

Wilde, Oscar

45.

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

46.

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

47.

I am never upset for the reason I think.

A Course In Miracles

48.

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

49.

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

Pope, Alexander

50.

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

Allen, Woody