Quotes About Reason

Address"—Religion cut off from reason too easily becomes oppressive.

The philosopher must argue for sense experience by appealing to sense experience. What choice does he have? If he appeals to something else as his final authority, he is simply being inconsistent. But this is the case with any basic commitment. When we are arguing on behalf of an absolute authority, then our final appeal must be to that authority and to no other. A proof of the primacy of reason must appeal to reason; a proof of the necessity of logic must appeal to logic;

Men are only too ready to be swayed by senseless passion.

Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.

The growth of modern constitutional government compels for its successful practice the exercise of reason and considerate judgment by the individual citizens who constitute the electorate.

Facts matter. Science matters. Reason matters. Mitt Romney has shown an inability to respect any of the three. President Barack Obama not only respects them, he relies on them. He is an overwhelming and unquestioned choice to continue as president.

True existence is only defined by rationality.

She wasn't afraid that Nils wouldn't accept the news well. He always accepted everything with equanimity, because he said everything had its reason.

Love shall never write its lasting characters on my mind, till my reason invites it: and where hopes rests not, reason cannot abide.

I've come back to you for a reason, Mother of Dragons-mistress of worms and serpents, from the smallest crawlers that renew the loam to the world-girding monster devouring his own tail.

Love came in so many forms. We love for weakness or strength, she thought, for security or wildness, for money, or beauty, or sometimes for sadness. Whatever reason, the brain turned giddy with self-worth, and self-worth became indelibly linked to the one who was loved.

But mostly I'm just respectful of old ways. I believe things for a reason, and in the old days they did things for a reason. And if you don't understand why—well, you might end up opening a few doors better left closed. That's all.

He said, 'Sooner or later one of Them is going to try to explain Himself to me. God—or Lucifer. But though there may be a reason why my wings were cut off, a reason for doing it, and for letting it be done, the reason is nothing compared to the act. The world of the act is a different one from the world of the reason.

In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.

Aquinas was unconvinced. The message of revealed religion contained in the Bible and church doctrine was meant for everyone, not just the rednecks among us. Likewise, every human being deserved to know the whole truth, not just a chosen elite. To fall for the notion of a "double truth" and argue there was one set of truths for reason and another for faith and never the two shall meet made nonsense of the idea of truth itself.

God's supreme reason dictates the structure of both the supernatural and the natural order, since both reflect His eternal purpose. Truths about the first are revealed to us in the form of divine law, which means Scripture. Truths about the second are revealed to us through our senses, by means of the laws of nature.

a single ideal of perfection, which is impossible to know through our senses, but is knowable through the soul of reason. If we can concentrate our minds instead on that higher standard, or what Socrates calls the Idea or Form of that virtue, defined as Courage or Beauty or Justice in Itself—or even Goodness, which is the highest Form of all, setting the standard of perfection for all the rest—then true wisdom will be ours.

Isaac Newton had demonstrated to Voltaire's satisfaction that human reason alone can discover the true inner workings of nature and the universe. Indeed, the human mind could achieve almost any goal it set for itself, as long as it remained grounded in experience and truth.

Man's reason was set free, but he used that freedom to try to dominate everything that now seemed separate from himself and human reason, the so-called Other. Science, law, government, even language itself—all became instruments by which Western man reduced diversity to sameness, spontaneity to uniformity, and difference (defined as the Other) to multiform objects for control, like butterflies in a killing-jar.

Like the boy from the expensive prep school who becomes a drug dealer, or the evangelist preacher who steals from his congregation, Augustine had discovered that simply knowing right from wrong was not enough. What's needed is a deeper emotional commitment to rightness and truth. Augustine saw it coming not from our reason or from our conscious will, which bears the stain of Adam, but from our faith.

At its heart, Roger Bacon's vision of science owes a great deal to the Neoplatonist inheritance or even Saint Augustine. For Bacon, it was the inner light of reason that stirs our desire to unlock the mysteries of nature and art, including the divine light around us: one reason Bacon was so fascinated with the science of optics.

For Hume, self-interest is all there is. The overriding guiding force in all our actions is not our reason, or our sense of obligation toward others, or any innate moral sense—all these are simply formed out of habit and experience—but the most basic human passion of all, the desire for self-gratification. It is the one thing human beings have in common. It is also the necessary starting point of any system of morality, and of any system of government

Any appeal to reason is hopeless, since "reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions": and the passions are the root of the problem.

Aquinas was no Averroist. His life's work would be an implicit repudiation of Averroës's idea that reason has a higher claim to truth than faith does.12 Instead, Thomas Aquinas's reading of Aristotle led him in a different direction. He would conclude that faith and reason are actually two sides of the same coin. His writings would try to persuade his age that men are part of both a divine and a human order, and both have valid standing in their lives.