REASON QUOTES III
quotations about reason
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Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other.
MARTIN LUTHER
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attributed, Day's Collacon
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Reason is the miner's lamp used in bringing up ore from the mind.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.
ALEXANDER POPE
Essay on Man and Other Poems
I'll not listen to reason.... Reason always means what someone else has got to say.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Cranford
Humor is reason gone mad.
GROUCHO MARX
attributed, The Laughter Prescription
Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Twelve Types
The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it.
JOHN LOCKE
Second Treatise of Government
You might be looking for reasons but there are no reasons.
NINA LACOUR
Hold Still
Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith.
BENEDICT XVI
Caritas in Veritate
I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and -- and rational argument.
BARACK OBAMA
press conference, February 9, 2009
There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Every man carries about him a touchstone, if he will make use of it, to distinguish substantial gold from superficial glitterings, truth from appearances. And indeed the use and benefit of this touchstone, which is natural reason, is spoiled and lost only by assuming prejudices, overweening presumption, and narrowing our minds.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Reason has built the modern world. It is a precious but also a fragile thing, which can be corroded by apparently harmless irrationality. We must favor verifiable evidence over private feeling. Otherwise we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would obscure the truth.
RICHARD DAWKINS
"Slaves to Superstition", The Enemies of Reason
Reason in man is rather like God in the world.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Opuscules
The problem is that barbarism does not respond to reason. Rejection of reason is a distinguishing characteristic of barbarism. Brute force, another characteristic of barbarism, beats reason every time, as scissors beat paper.
LES MACPHERSON
"Reason no deterrent to barbaric enemies", Saskatoon Star Phoenix, February 11, 2016
Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Our Knowledge of the External World
Reason is a necessary instrument, to be used for good or evil, but it has no moral qualities.
REINHARD BENDIX
Embattled Reason
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Orthodoxy
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
ANTON CHEKHOV
Uncle Vanya
O reason, reason, abstract phantom of the waking state, I had already expelled you from my dreams, now I have reached a point where those dreams are about to become fused with apparent realities: now there is only room here for myself.
LOUIS ARAGON
Paris Peasant