REASON QUOTES
quotations about reason
Reason, like the Sun, is common to all; and 'tis for want of examining all by the same light and measure, that we are not all of the same mind: For all have it to that end, though not all do use it so.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Reason and instinct have an inveterate habit of cancelling each other out.
MAX BEERBOHM
The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm
Reason is God's greatest gift to man.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone
A reasonable opinion must ever be in danger where Reason is not judge.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Reason ... governs like a just and lawful prince, and the little community of man is thus held together and sustained.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
We may reason on to our heart's content, the fog won't lift.
SAMUEL BECKETT
The Expelled
As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
If the sceptical reasonings be strong, say they, it is a proof, that reason may have some force and authority: if weak, they can never be sufficient to invalidate all the conclusions of our understanding. This argument is not just; because the sceptical reasonings, were it possible for them to exist, and were they not destroyed by their subtility, would be successively both strong and weak, according to the successive dispositions of the mind. Reason first appears in possession of the throne, prescribing laws, and imposing maxims, with an absolute sway and authority. Her enemy, therefore, is obliged to take shelter under her protection, and by making use of rational arguments to prove the fallaciousness and imbecility of reason, produces, in a manner, a patent under her band and seal. This patent has at first an authority, proportioned to the present and immediate authority of reason, from which it is derived. But as it is supposed to be contradictory to reason, it gradually diminishes the force of that governing power and its own at the same time; till at last they both vanish away into nothing, by a regulax and just diminution. The sceptical and dogmatical reasons are of the same kind, though contrary in their operation and tendency; so that where the latter is strong, it has an enemy of equal force in the former to encounter; and as their forces were at first equal, they still continue so, as long as either of them subsists; nor does one of them lose any force in the contest, without taking as much from its antagonist. It is happy, therefore, that nature breaks the force of all sceptical arguments in time, and keeps them from having any considerable influence on the understanding. Were we to trust entirely to their self-destruction, that can never take place, until they have first subverted all conviction, and have totally destroyed human reason.
DAVID HUME
"Of Scepticism with Regard to Reason", A Treatise of Human Nature
Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people.
MARIO PUZO
The Godfather
Man is naturally a reasoning animal, and is only then truly a man when his passions are tempered and his conduct regulated by reason. The function of reason is the recognition and the realization of truth; truth recognised in speculation is science; truth realized in action is a moral life and a well-ordered society.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
Four Phases of Morals
Thought is what makes humans human ... It's the luminous spark of reason that grants us lordship over the animals, endows us with cell phones, and offers hope, even in our darkest hours, that our species will somehow calculate the way forward to a brighter tomorrow.
BRUNO MADDOX
Discover magazine, May 2006
Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.
ERICH FROMM
The Sane Society
A display of reason rather than a threat of force should be the determining factor in the intercourse among nations.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
inaugural address, March 4, 1925
All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence.
COVENTRY PATMORE
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower
Reasons are the pillars of the mind.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Reason is always weak where prejudice is strong.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Men may be divided into two classes, according to the use they make of reason. Some men employ reason, or, as it is more commonly called, SENSE, to defend error by argument; others employ it, to discover and distinguish truth: the power, therefore, which we call SENSE, may exist without its use; and it is only valuable, in proportion as the mind is candid, dispassionate, impartial, and unprejudiced.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
The eyes of reason are the eyes of nature, and the eyes of nature cannot see into that which is beyond or above nature.
JOHN PULSFORD
Quiet Hours
Come, let us reason together, saith the Lord, that there may be lights in the firmament of the heaven, and they may shine upon the earth.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists