Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- White, William Allen

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Aragon, Louis

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

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

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

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

Hegel, Georg

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

Sophocles

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

Voltaire

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

Morrison, Toni

10.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

15.

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

Swift, Jonathan

16.

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.

Havel, Vaclav

17.

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

William Shakespeare

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Wesley, John

23.

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

Hegel, Georg

24.

Everyone has his reasons.

Renoir, Jean

25.

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

26.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

27.

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

Richard, Little

28.

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

Sterne, Laurence

29.

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

30.

I am never upset for the reason I think.

A Course In Miracles

31.

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

Bacon, Roger

32.

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

Connolly, Cyril

33.

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

Hazlitt, William

34.

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

Butler, Samuel

35.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Pope, Alexander

39.

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

Dryden, John

40.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

41.

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

Yeats, William Butler

42.

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

Russell, Bertrand

43.

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

Allen, Woody

44.

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

Bloom, Allan

45.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

46.

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.

47.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

48.

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

Warburton, William

49.

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

White, William Allen

50.

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