Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Russell, Bertrand

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

Allen, Woody

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

Bacon, Roger

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

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

Warburton, William

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

Frost, Robert

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

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

10.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

11.

A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

12.

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

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

15.

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

Pope, Alexander

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Sterne, Laurence

19.

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

20.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

21.

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

22.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

23.

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

Devoto, Bernard

24.

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.

25.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

26.

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

Luther, Martin

27.

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

28.

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

Morrison, Toni

29.

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

Hegel, Georg

30.

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

Voltaire

31.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

32.

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

William Shakespeare

33.

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

Hazlitt, William

34.

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

Eastwood, Clint

35.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

36.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

37.

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

38.

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

Swift, Jonathan

39.

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

Connolly, Cyril

40.

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

41.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Hamilton, Alexander

42.

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

Proverb, Welsh

43.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

44.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

45.

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

Yeats, William Butler

46.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

47.

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

48.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

49.

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

50.

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