REASON QUOTES III
quotations about reason
Within the brain's most secret cells
A certain Lord Chief Justice dwells
Of sovereign power, whom one and all
With common voice, we Reason call.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
The Ghost
Humor is reason gone mad.
GROUCHO MARX
attributed, The Laughter Prescription
Let reason flow like water around a stone, the stone remains.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Critique of Pure Reason"
You might be looking for reasons but there are no reasons.
NINA LACOUR
Hold Still
He who, superior to the checks of nature,
Dares make his life the victim of his reason,
Does in some sort that reason deify,
And take a flight at heav'n.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Revenge
Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature -- is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
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
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 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
I'll not listen to reason.... Reason always means what someone else has got to say.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Cranford
There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Reason is like a runner who doesn't know that the race is over, or, like Penelope, constantly undoing what it creates.... It is better suited to pulling things down than to building them up, and better at discovering what things are not, than what they are.
PIERRE BAYLE
Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, 1703
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
Reason is a necessary instrument, to be used for good or evil, but it has no moral qualities.
REINHARD BENDIX
Embattled Reason
The sleep of reason produces monsters.
FRANCISCO GOYA
caption on etching, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
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
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, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.
WILLIAM BLAKE
There is No Natural Religion