quotations about reason
Reason is a religious duty and quality of the mind; and exercise of the judgment upon all occasions and subjects is true and most divine worship.
CORA HATCH
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"The Religion of Life", Discourses on Religion, Morals, Philosophy and Metaphysics
Water cannot rise higher than its source, neither can human reason. Now, all reasoning respecting transcendent truths must have its source where the truths or ideas themselves originate.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
notes appended to the third edition of Southey's Life of Wesley
Whenever he was required to use his reason he felt like someone who had always used his right hand but was now required to do something with his left.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook B", The Waste Books
Reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
HONORE DE BALZAC
A Woman of Thirty
My reason is the universe's voice.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Prayer", Poetical Meditations
Mental or spiritual health, which is rationality, makes for progress, and the future demands greater and greater mental or spiritual health, greater and greater rationality. The brain must dominate and direct both the individual and society in the time to come, not the belly and the heart.
JACK LONDON
The Kempton-Wace Letters
Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
He that gives Reason for what he saith, has done what is fit to be done; and the most that can be done: He, that gives not Reason, speaks nothing, though he saith never so much.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Reason often overturns experience.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Human reason is a pin dancing on the head of an angel, so small is it in comparison to the Divine vastness that encircles us.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
Reason is the newest and rarest thing in human life, the most delicate child of human history.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine sense is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
People are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
It is to no manner of purpose that we have reason on our side, when the laugh is against us.
ROBERT BOLTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Changing from the ghosts of faith to the spectres of reason is just changing cells.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
He that useth his reason doth acknowledge God.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Sometimes people need reasons for things, even when there are no reasons. That's what makes people believe in conspiracies or religions--if there's any difference. The world is just too complicated, so they need simple explanations.
TAD WILLIAMS
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
Those that differ upon Reason, may come together by Reason.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
When God is contriving misfortunes for man, He first deprives him of his reason.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon