Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Karl Marx

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

Bacon, Roger

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

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

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

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

Sterne, Laurence

Reason gains all people by compelling none.

Hill, Aaron

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del

10.

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

11.

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

Yeats, William Butler

12.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Hamilton, Alexander

13.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

14.

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

Bloom, Allan

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

18.

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

Luther, Martin

19.

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

Voltaire

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.

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

Russell, Bertrand

22.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

23.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

24.

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

25.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

26.

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

Cioran, E. M.

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Warburton, William

30.

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

31.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

32.

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

Hegel, Georg

33.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

34.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

35.

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

Dryden, John

36.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

37.

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

Proverb, Welsh

38.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

39.

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

Hazlitt, William

40.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

41.

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

42.

A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

43.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

44.

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

Frost, Robert

45.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

46.

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

47.

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

Aragon, Louis

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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