Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

Richard, Little

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

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

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.

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

Bloom, Allan

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

Swift, Jonathan

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

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

10.

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

Phillips, Wendell

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.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

14.

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

Yeats, William Butler

15.

A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

16.

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

Gaskell, Elizabeth

17.

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

Karl Marx

18.

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

19.

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

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.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Russell, Bertrand

24.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

25.

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.

26.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

27.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

28.

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

29.

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

Warburton, William

30.

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

Pope, Alexander

31.

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

32.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

34.

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

35.

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

Hegel, Georg

36.

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

Dryden, John

37.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

38.

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

Allen, Woody

39.

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

40.

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

William Shakespeare

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Devoto, Bernard

47.

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

Connolly, Cyril

48.

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