Motivational Quotes

Reason

Every why hath a wherefore.

- William Shakespeare

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Phillips, Wendell

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

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

Devoto, Bernard

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

Dryden, 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

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

Voltaire

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

Reason can in general do more than blind force.

Gallus, Gaius C.

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

Lowell, James Russell

10.

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

Voltaire

11.

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

12.

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

13.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

Froude, James A.

14.

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

Richard, Little

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Hegel, Georg

18.

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

Frost, Robert

19.

To reason about love is to lose reason.

Boufflers

20.

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

Swift, Jonathan

21.

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

22.

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

Karl Marx

23.

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

Sophocles

24.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

25.

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

Luther, Martin

26.

His reasons are as two grains of wheat his in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

William Shakespeare

27.

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

Warburton, William

28.

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

29.

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

Bacon, Roger

30.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

31.

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

32.

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

Yeats, William Butler

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

Reason gains all people by compelling none.

Hill, Aaron

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.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Hegel, Georg

41.

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

Sterne, Laurence

42.

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.

43.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

44.

I am never upset for the reason I think.

A Course In Miracles

45.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

46.

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