Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Yeats, William Butler

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Voltaire

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

Phillips, Wendell

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

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

Gaskell, Elizabeth

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

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

Luther, Martin

The person who is master of their passions is reason's slave.

Connolly, Cyril

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.

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

Petersen, Soren F.

10.

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

Voltaire

11.

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

12.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

13.

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

14.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

15.

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

16.

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

Hegel, Georg

17.

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

Butler, Samuel

18.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

19.

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

Karl Marx

20.

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

21.

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

Sophocles

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

27.

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

Morrison, Toni

28.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

29.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Hazlitt, William

36.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

37.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

38.

Let reason govern desire.