Motivational Quotes

Reason

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

Best Quotes about Reason

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

Every why hath a wherefore.

William Shakespeare

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Kant, Immanuel

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

Abbagnano, Nicola

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

Sophocles

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

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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

Morrison, Toni

10.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Rivarol, Antoine

11.

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

Voltaire

12.

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

13.

To reason about love is to lose reason.

Boufflers

14.

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

Aquinas, St. Thomas

15.

A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

16.

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.

17.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.

Boileau, Nicholas

18.

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

Luther, Martin

19.

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

20.

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

Browne, Sir Thomas

21.

Let reason govern desire.

Cicero, Marcus T.

22.

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

Russell, Bertrand

23.

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

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

24.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

25.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

26.

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

William Shakespeare

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.

Proverb, Italian

30.

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.

31.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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

Petersen, Soren F.

36.

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

Aragon, Louis

37.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Ovid

38.

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

Richard, Little

39.

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

Devoto, Bernard

40.

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

Warburton, William

41.

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

42.

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

Karl Marx

43.

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

Hazlitt, William

44.

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

Lowell, James Russell

45.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.