Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- White, William Allen

Best Quotes about Reason

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

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

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

Phillips, Wendell

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

Bacon, Roger

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

Frost, Robert

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

Hegel, Georg

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

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

Voltaire

10.

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

Sterne, Laurence

11.

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.

12.

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

Karl Marx

13.

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

14.

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del

15.

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

William Shakespeare

16.

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

17.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

22.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

23.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Hamilton, Alexander

27.

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

Wesley, John

28.

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

Dryden, John

29.

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

Richard, Little

30.

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

Devoto, Bernard

31.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

32.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

33.

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

34.

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

White, William Allen

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

Proverb, Welsh

38.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

39.

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

Allen, Woody

40.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

41.

Reason gains all people by compelling none.

Hill, Aaron

42.

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

43.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

44.

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

Lowell, James Russell

45.

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

Petersen, Soren F.

46.

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

47.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

48.

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

Hegel, Georg

49.

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

Bloom, Allan

50.

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