Motivational Quotes

Reason

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.

Best Quotes about Reason

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

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

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

Voltaire

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

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

Dryden, John

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

Butler, Samuel

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

10.

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

Allen, Woody

11.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

12.

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

Aragon, Louis

13.

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

White, William Allen

14.

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

15.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Hamilton, Alexander

16.

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

Cioran, E. M.

17.

Too much sensibility creates unhappiness and too much insensibility creates crime.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

18.

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

Lowell, James Russell

19.

The more you reason the less you create.

Chandler, Raymond

20.

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

21.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

22.

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

Hegel, Georg

23.

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

Frost, Robert

24.

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

Bacon, Roger

25.

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

26.

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

Yeats, William Butler

27.

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.

28.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

29.

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

Bloom, Allan

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

I tried being reasonable, I didn't like it.

Eastwood, Clint

34.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

35.

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

Hazlitt, William

36.

Reason gains all people by compelling none.

Hill, Aaron

37.

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

Sophocles

38.

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

Devoto, Bernard

39.

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

Morrison, Toni

40.

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

41.

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

Luther, Martin

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.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

44.

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

Petersen, Soren F.

45.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

46.

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.