REASON QUOTES II
quotations about reason
When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.
SIR WALTER SCOTT
attributed, Day's Collacon
You can't trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.
FREDERIK POHL
The Space Merchants
History confirms and reconfirms the limits of reason. It was not reason, for instance, that defeated German and Japanese aggression in two world wars. It was not reason that for decades thereafter kept Soviet wickedness in check. These were tyrannical regimes that steamrolled over reason. They only stopped or retreated when met with superior force.
LES MACPHERSON
"Reason no deterrent to barbaric enemies", Saskatoon Star Phoenix, February 11, 2016
Men's reasonings on practical subjects are not cold, logical processes, standing separate in the mind, but are carried on in intimate connection with their prevalent feelings and modes of thought. Generally speaking, that, and that only, is truth to a man which accords with the common tone of his mind, with the mass of his impressions, with the results of his experience, with his measure of intellectual development, and especially with those deep convictions and biases which constitute what we call character.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Never reason from what you do not know; if you do, you will soon believe what is utterly against reason.
J. RAMSAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
Lectures on the Philosophy of History
Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other.
MARTIN LUTHER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Hear Reason, or she'll make you feel her.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1744
Reason and the reasoning faculty need no foreign assistance, but are sufficient for their own purposes. They move within themselves, and make directly for the point in view. Wherefore, acts in accordance with them are called right acts, for they lead along the right road.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
If not reason, then the devil.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Crime and Punishment
The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it.
JOHN LOCKE
Second Treatise of Government
What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man and Other Poems
Reason is the miner's lamp used in bringing up ore from the mind.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
If a man be once out of the use of Reason, there are no bounds to Unreasonableness.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Reason has built the modern world. It is a precious but also a fragile thing, which can be corroded by apparently harmless irrationality. We must favor verifiable evidence over private feeling. Otherwise we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would obscure the truth.
RICHARD DAWKINS
"Slaves to Superstition", The Enemies of Reason
Humor is reason gone mad.
GROUCHO MARX
attributed, The Laughter Prescription
I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and -- and rational argument.
BARACK OBAMA
press conference, February 9, 2009
I'll not listen to reason.... Reason always means what someone else has got to say.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Cranford
Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature -- is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality