Reason Quotes

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one.

Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head?

Every object you see before you at this moment -the walls, ceiling, and furniture, the book, your own washed hands and cut fingernails, bears witness to the colonization of Nature of Reason.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

That is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we feel; we just feel.

You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. Stick to Facts, sir!

We are too weak to discover the truth by reason alone

It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice

Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.

Every man's Reason is sufficient for his guidance, if used.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of soul, which raises it above the troubles, disorders and emotions which the sight of great perils can arouse in it; by this strength heroes maintain a calm aspect and preserve their reason and liberty in the most surprising and terrible accidents.

Don't allow your animal nature to rule your reason.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.

It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.

Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.

Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,- "'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die."

I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.

I have learned to be less confident in the conclusions of human reason, and give more credit to the honesty of contrary opinions.

Law is nothing else but the best reason of wise men applied for ages to the transactions and business of mankind.

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity.

Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.

Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.

Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts ; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.

If there are sound reasons or bases for the points you demand, then there is no need for violence. On the other hand, when there is no sound reason that concessions should be made to you but mainly your own desire, then reason cannot work and you have to rely on force. Thus using force is not a sign of strength but rather a sign of weakness.

Reason is the slave of passion.

For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.

Communists must always go into the why's and wherefore's of anything, use their own heads and carefully think over whether or not it corresponds to reality and is really well founded; on no account should they follow blindly and encourage slavishness.

Everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and it serves you.

Man is much more than a 'rational being' and lives more by sympathies and impressions than by conclusions. It darkens his eyes and dries up the wells of his humanity to be forever in search of doctrine. We need wholesome, experiencing na­tures, I dare affirm, much more than we need sound reasoning.

Opinion is called the queen of the world; it is so, for when reason opposes it, it is condemned to death. It must rise twenty times from its ashes to gradually drive away the usurper.

True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

It seems to me, that if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or were accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent.

We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit. He who does not do so, understands not the force of reason.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Let reason govern desire.

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.

You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots.

He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free. Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls. Where words come out from the depth of truth, where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection. Where the clear stream of reason has not lost it's way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit. Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action. In to that heaven of freedom, my father, LET MY COUNTRY AWAKE!

Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.

Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute.

Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.

Il y a deux sortes d'esprits, l'un ge ome trique, et l'autre que l'on peut appeler de finesse. Le premier a des vues lentes, dures et inflexibles; mais le dernier a une souplesse de pense e. There are two kinds of mind, one mathematical, the other what one might call the intuitive. The first takes a slow, firm, inflexible view, but the latter has flexibility of thought.

We do not wish ardently for what we desire only through reason.

Good reasons must of force give place to better.

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.

The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.

The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.

This can never become popular, and, indeed, has no occasion to be so; for fine-spun arguments in favour of useful truths make just as little impression on the public mind as the equally subtle objections brought against these truths. On the other hand, since both inevitably force themselves on every man who rises to the height of speculation, it becomes the manifest duty of the schools to enter upon a thorough investigation of the rights of speculative reason, and thus to prevent the scandal which metaphysical controversies are sure, sooner or later, to cause even to the masses.

Reason is the mistress and queen of all things.[Lat., Domina omnium et regina ratio.]