Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Aquinas, St. Thomas

Best Quotes about Reason

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

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

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

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

Bloom, Allan

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

Allen, Woody

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 gains all people by compelling none.

Hill, Aaron

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

Hegel, Georg

10.

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

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.

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

13.

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

Hazlitt, William

14.

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del

15.

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

Aragon, Louis

16.

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

Butler, Samuel

17.

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

Yeats, William Butler

18.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

19.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

20.

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

Bacon, Roger

21.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

22.

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

Warburton, William

23.

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

24.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

25.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

26.

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

Wesley, John

27.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

28.

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

29.

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

Cioran, E. M.

30.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

31.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

32.

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

Eastwood, Clint

33.

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

Russell, Bertrand

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Frost, Robert

38.

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

39.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

40.

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

Lowell, James Russell

41.

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

42.

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

Gaskell, Elizabeth

43.

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

44.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

45.

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

Luther, Martin

46.

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

Proverb, Welsh

47.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

48.

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

49.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

50.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard