Reason Quotes - Page 8

Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?

Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief.

Hope Mirrlees

It's been said before: 'The sleep of reason produces monsters.

Apostolos Doxiadis

In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance

Thomas Jefferson

Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.

David Bentley Hart

To irrational principles, one cannot be loyal. Ideas that are not derived from reality cannot be consistently practiced in reality.--as quoted by Leonard Peikoff in "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

Having learnt from experiment and argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this, and always expects the law he has learnt to be fulfilled.But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, he does not and cannot believe it.However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the same conditions and with the same character he will do the same thing as before, yet when, under the same conditions and with the same character, he approaches for the thousandth time the action that always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels that, however impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conceptions of freedom not only would he be unable to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single moment.He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life.If the conception of freedom appears to reason a senseless contradiction, like the possibility of performing two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.

Leo Tolstoy

There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.

Samuel Johnson

The World's Fair audience tended to think of the machine as unqualifiedly good, strong, stupid and obedient. They thought of it as a giant slave, an untiring steel Negro, controlled by Reason in a world of infinite resources.

Robert Hughes

Without the voice of reason, every faith is its own c

Sting

Misuse of reason might yet return the world to pre-technological night; plenty of religious zealots hunger for just such a result, and are happy to use the latest technology to effect it.

A.C. Grayling

...there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

there are times when life's ends are so raveled that reason and sense cry out that we stop and gather them together again before we can proceed

Richard Wright

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. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.

Charlotte Brontë

You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp its seat, and rule in its stead.

Philip Dormer Stanhope

Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface.

Karen Joy Fowler

Reason is flawless, de jure, but reasoners are not, de facto.

Peter Kreeft

I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.

Leo Szilard

Reasons aren't really things that make you do other things. Reasons are things that you make up, much later, to reassure everyone that we are all logical and that the world makes sense. We do unreasonable things, because we want to, at the time. No reason. Much later we sit in the wreckage, building reasons out of little bits of wreckage, so we'll have something to show the crash investigators. Look, this is what caused it. So the whole mess at least appears reasonable. So we can convince ourselves that at least there was a reason for the disaster, something we can prevent or avoid, so it'll never happen again. But a lot of the time there's no reason. We just flew it to the ground. Because we felt like it. And we're still dangerous. And it could happen again anytime. Its easier to live with each other afterwards if we give each other reasons.

Julian Gough

To think or not to think? That is the new question.

Nadina Boun

To be against rationalization is not the same as to be opposed to reasoning.

Christopher Hitchens

There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it.What the devil was the reason?

Mary Balogh

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

Nicola Abbagnano

love has a very dulling effect on the brain

Elizabeth Peters

When our patterns are threatened by new facts, reason is seldom the victor: 'I know what I think, so don't go confusing me with new opinions.

Marianne Fredriksson

The voices of cold reason were talking, as usual, to deaf ears.

Ellis Peters

Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.

Immanuel Kant

All order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal — a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world — two snake pits.

John Gardner

Reason is the hero who breaks the chains of our prejudice, saving us from the prison of our comfortable acquiescence in the way of the world.

Montague Brown

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.

Sam Harris

I was afraid of being rejected, yes. I was also afraid of being accepted for the wrong reasons.

Erich Segal

Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.

Ayn Rand

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

Arthur Conan Doyle

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

Blaise Pascal

Reason must know the heart's reasons and every other reason

Leonora Carrington

Stephanie had no problem doing what shewas told, just so long as she was given a good reason why sheshould.

Derek Landy

A man always has two reasons for what he does--a good one, and the real one.

J.P. Morgan

Some arrogant feel very confident that they are the best.That's pity. Much better men let them feel so for a reason.

Toba Beta

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Oscar Wilde

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart — the best brain.

Robert G. Ingersoll

There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ance

Noah Webster

Jane! will you hear reason?' (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) 'because, if you won't, I'll try violence.

Charlotte Brontë

I think the reason I choose the comic approach so often is because it's harder, therefore affording me the opportunity to show off.

Rita Mae Brown

The reason so many people never get anywhere in life is because when opportunity knocks, they are out in the backyard looking for four-leaf clovers.

Walter Chrysler

She was the reason I started to write but her beauty is kept me writing.

Brandon Villasenor

Romanticism is man's revolt against reason, as well as against the condition under which nature has compelled him to live.

Ludwig von Mises

Reason lost the battle, and all I could do was surrender and accept I was in love.

Paulo Coelho

Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are rightTo warn me against losing mine. I cannot say—I hope that I shall never want to say!— that youHave reasoned badly. Yet there are other menWho can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful.You are not in a position to know everythingThat people say or do, or what they feel:Your temper terrifies them—everyoneWill tell you only what you like to hear.

Sophocles

Pride is always a better lever against the nobility than reason.

Patrick Rothfuss

I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.

Michel de Montaigne

Where wise actions are the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination.

Bryant McGill

Exposition is a mode of thought, a method of learning, and a means of expression. Almost all of the characteristics we associate with mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the strongest possible bias toward exposition: a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response.

Neil Postman

Always best to start with violence and attempt communication second. People reacted more favorably when they knew you would snuff a few lives to get what you wanted... or for no reason whatsoever.

Michael R. Fletcher

The root of liberalism, in a word, is hatred of compulsion, for liberalism has the respect for the individual and his conscience and reason which the employment of coercion necessarily destroys. The liberal has faith in the individual – faith that he can be persuaded by rational means to beliefs compatible with social good.

Harold Edmund Stearns

Nature seems to take advantage of the simple mathematical representations of the symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider the elegance and the beautiful perfection of the mathematical reasoning involved and contrast it with the complex and far-reaching physical consequences, a deep sense of respect for the power of the symmetry laws never fails to develop.

Chen Ning Yang

I'll be damned if I apologize for the choices I've made. They were hard decisions, but I had good reasons for making them.

Christine Feehan

If I had a choice, if I had understood earlier that the reason my days were all the same was because I wanted them like that, perhaps...

Paulo Coelho

Just like the forces of Good and Evil, on the levels so much distant from man, logic and reason clash with each other. In that merciless, multi-millennial and primal battle, none of them stepped away for an inch. In a craddle, like no man's land, we, the young human beings, find ourselves gazing upon the "toys that glitter". I wanted to believe.

Mladen Đorđević

Smile out loud! Make them wonder.

Ljupka Cvetanova

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Reason Quotes - Page 8

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