Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

- Russell, Bertrand

Best Quotes about Reason

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

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

Wesley, John

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

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

Everyone has his reasons.

Renoir, Jean

That proves you are unusual, returned the Scarecrow; and I am convinced the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.

Baum, Lyman Frank

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

Sterne, Laurence

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

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

Bacon, Roger

10.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

11.

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.

12.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

13.

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

14.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

15.

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

Butler, Samuel

16.

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

Morrison, Toni

17.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

18.

I am never upset for the reason I think.

A Course In Miracles

19.

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

White, William Allen

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Voltaire

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Petersen, Soren F.

26.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Phillips, Wendell

30.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Shaw, George Bernard

31.

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

32.

A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

33.

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

34.

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

Karl Marx

35.

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

Lowell, James Russell

36.

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

William Shakespeare

37.

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

38.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

39.

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

Voltaire

40.

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

Yeats, William Butler

41.

No one ever excused his way to success.

Dotto, Dave Del

42.

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

Luther, Martin

43.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Hamilton, Alexander

44.

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

Gaskell, Elizabeth

45.

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

46.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

47.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

48.

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

49.

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

Proverb, Welsh

50.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth