Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Warburton, William

Best Quotes about Reason

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

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

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

Pope, Alexander

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

Aragon, Louis

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

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

Hegel, Georg

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.

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

White, William Allen

11.

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

Sterne, Laurence

12.

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

13.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

14.

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

Phillips, Wendell

15.

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

16.

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

Devoto, Bernard

17.

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

Warburton, William

18.

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

Russell, Bertrand

19.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

20.

I am never upset for the reason I think.

A Course In Miracles

21.

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

William Shakespeare

22.

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.

23.

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del

24.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

25.

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

Sophocles

26.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

27.

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

28.

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

Bloom, Allan

29.

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

30.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

31.

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

Yeats, William Butler

32.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

33.

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

Bacon, Roger

34.

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

Morrison, Toni

35.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

36.

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

37.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

38.

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

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.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

41.

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

Hazlitt, William

42.

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

43.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

44.

To reason about love is to lose reason.

Boufflers

45.

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

46.

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

Swift, Jonathan

47.

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

48.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

49.

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

Butler, Samuel

50.

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

Eastwood, Clint