Reason Quotes

Can reason lead us in directions that are good or decent or moral? After all, you pointed out that reason is just a means to an end, and the end depends on the reasoner's passions. Reason can lay out a road map to peace and harmony if the reasoner wants peace and harmony, but it can also lay out a road map to conflict and strife if the reasoner delights in conflict and strife. Can reason force the reasoner to want less cruelty and waste?

Why should I even bother? What's the point, really?"He thought for a moment. "Who says there has to be a point?" he asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do.

Nature takes the decision first, man agrees, reconciles, modifies, refutes, contradicts etc., subsequently. It means the application of reason, the discretionary power of a man, only happens afterwards!

Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even it if goes wrong, it lives.

I think little of people who will deny their history because it doesn't present the picture they would like.

The reason the very concept of God has become at once so impoverished, so thoroughly mythical, and ultimately so incredible for so many modern persons is not because of all the interesting things we have learned over the past few centuries, but because of all the vital things we have forgotten.

We cross paths with certain people in our tangled lives for a reason. It's not by chance, not an accident but it's on a purpose. You were made to be part of someone's life for it was written long before you were born."- Elizabeth's Quotes

We went back into the Mens Apartments where there were others raving of Ships that may fly and silvered Creatures upon the Moon: Their Stories seem to have neither Head nor Tayl to them, Sir Chris. told me, but there is a Grammar in them if I could but Puzzle it out.This is a mad Age, I replied, and there are many fitter for Bedlam than these here confin'd to a Chain or a dark Room.A sad Reflection, Nick.And what little Purpose have we to glory in our Reason, I continu'd, when the Brain may so suddenly be disorder'd?

Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback set it up on one side and it tumbles over on the other.

That's a rhetorical question, and trying to answer rhetorical questions instead of being cowed by them is a good habit to cultivate.

Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.

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

The deliberate habituation of patriotism has a bearing upon the problem of peace. Knowledge of other peoples will not bring harmony and mutual goodwill unless it is sympathetic knowledge, and, if it is to be sympathetic, our mental prepossessions must be shaped so as to open our minds to a just appreciation of unwelcome facts and ways at variance with our own.

May it [American independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately... These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.]

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

All that alcohol does for them is to liberate the sense of sin, which reason suppresses in saner moments.

There's a reason why golfers walk forward to their next shot. It's to move on.

For once the crofter was at a a rather loss for words, for to him nothing has ever been more completely unintelligible than the reasoning that is bred of tears.

God is perceived by the heart, not by your reason. But what is reason? Your heart simplifying God’s guidance to fit your own needs.

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

Logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

In the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent

I only come out for food.

Art forms that appeal to [leftists] tend to focus on ... defeat and despair ... as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation.

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?

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay - others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind...

There's no need to curse God if you're an ugly duckling. He chooses those strong enough to endure it so that they can guide others who've felt the same.

The reason gold-diggers trivializerelationships is because they do not know love,they only know money.

No emotion is, in itself, a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. but they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

The happiness of mankind, if it ever should come to pass, would still leave men asking: Why? What point to it? To what end?

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Yet I must tell you, that all these graces which are expressed by passions of sorrow, fear, joy, hope, love, are not so certainly to be tried by the passion that is in them, as by the will that is either contained in them, or supposed in them; not as acts of the sensitive, but of the rational appetite (358).

A slow smile spread across his lips, and he threaded his fingers through mine. "I can see why I like you.

This was true, she knew. Being involved with him gave her the privileged position of knowing him intimately. There were nights when he would wake up sweating, the nightmares returning out of the blue after a peaceful period sometimes weeks long. Growing up in the middle of a fierce civil war could indelibly mark a child. To Mykl, birthdays were always just another year under the belt, where the only reason to celebrate was that you weren’t dead yet. She took his hand, squeezed it tight and led him inside.

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...

In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.

for a purpose without reason

The only reason for your intimidation by the devil, and you're being afraid of him, or what he can do is because you are living in ignorance (darkness) which is his territory.

Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.

We magistrates find that reason is the easiest thing in the world to dispense with; banished from our law courts as it is from our heads, we delight in trampling it underfoot, and that is what makes our judicial sentences such masterpieces, since (although commonsense never presides in them) those sentences are carried out with as much firmness as if people knew what they actually meant.

The reader of these reflections of mine on the Trinity should bear in mind that my pen is on the watch against the sophistries of those who scorn the starting-point of faith, and allow themselves to be deceived through an unseasonable and misguided love of reason.

You do not have to be beautiful.You do not even have to be intelligent.All you have to do is practice kindness,for that is our purpose.

Everything feels like the end of the world, and you can't reason with someone who can't see tomorrow.

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.

But maybe that isn't possible. Maybe the mind of the majority is always the healthy mind, simply by virtue of its numbers. Maybe it's the definition of madness to believe I'm right and everyone else if wrong, to find my thoughts rational and reasonable when almost the entire world finds them damaged and flawed.

So when they win, it's their hard workAnd when they lose, it's their bad luck

Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.

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.

Were such things here as we do speak about?Or have we eaten on the insane rootThat takes the reason prisoner?

I project myself to love and devote my time and attention to someone without a reason, so at least I can give someone the feelings of being the most special person in someone’s life.

Knock on the heart’s emotions and its gates will be widely opened, but nock on reason and doubt will come charging at you

Humanity is a cage, and our puritanical sensibilities comprise the bars. We are confined by our own reason and intellect, and yet most of us don't even know it.

God through Prophet Hosea is explaining to us reasons for destructions, calamities, failures and devastations among the people of God. That reason is not seen in demonic activities nor is it seen in prevailing economic situations of the land

When you feel you are badly falling into the emptiness, stick to the reason , stick to the logic; they will reverse the situation!

The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers.

The last thing Scripture should do is make you blind in the world. Instead, you hear everything, see everything, and feel everything because everything just so happens to point right back to it.

Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name.

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

Poor feeling hijacks thinking for self-deception: to hide harsh truths, avoid action, evade responsibility, and, as the existentialists might put it, flee from freedom. Thus, poor feeling is a kind of moral failing, indeed, the deepest kind, and virtue principally consists in correcting and refining our emotions and the values that they reflect. To feel the right thing is to do the right thing, without any particular need for conscious thought or effort.

Reason is your means of survival — so that for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be’ is the question 'to think or not to think..'.