Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Reason

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

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

Richard, Little

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

Lowell, James Russell

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

Hegel, Georg

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

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

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

Baudelaire, Charles

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

Dryden, John

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

10.

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

Petersen, Soren F.

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

14.

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

Hazlitt, William

15.

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

Frost, Robert

16.

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.

17.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

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

Aragon, Louis

19.

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

20.

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

White, William Allen

21.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

22.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

23.

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

24.

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.

25.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

26.

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

Phillips, Wendell

27.

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

Warburton, William

28.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

29.

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

Cioran, E. M.

30.

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

Karl Marx

31.

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

Sophocles

32.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

33.

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

34.

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

Yeats, William Butler

35.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

36.

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

37.

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

Bloom, Allan

38.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

39.

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

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.

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

43.

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

44.

A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

45.

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

Proverb, Welsh

46.

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

Sterne, Laurence

47.

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

48.

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

Morrison, Toni

49.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

50.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian