Quotes About Reason

They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.

They say that it's hard for men to agree. You'd be surprised how easy it is—when both parties hold as their moral absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of trade.

There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine that attacked (or "limited") reason, which did not also preach submission to the power of some authority.

We all subscribe to preposterous beliefs; we just don't know yet which ones they are. We too have been known to prefer plot to truth; to deny the evidence before us in favor of the ideas behind us; to do insane things in the name of reason; to take that satisfying step from the righteous to the self-righteous; to drown our private guilt in a public well; to indulge in a little delusion.

It turns out to be eminently useful to have a disgrace in your past; Salem endures not only as a metaphor but as a vaccine and a taunt. It glares at us when fear paralyzes reason, when we overreact or overcorrect, when we hunt down or deliver up the alien or seditious.

The Massachusetts elite had read everything in sight, some of it too closely. As would be said of logic-loving Ipswich minister John Wise, those men were not so much the masters as the victims of learning. They had read and reread bushels of witchcraft texts. They parsed legal code. They knew their history. They worked in the sterling name of reason.

Salem endures not only as a metaphor but as a vaccine and a taunt. It glares at us when fear paralyzes reason, when we overreact or overcorrect, when we hunt down or deliver up the alien or seditious. It endures in its lessons and our language.

His enemies, insisted Adams, came in handy: "Our friends are either blind to our faults or not faithful enough to tell us of them." He knew that we are governed more by our feelings than by reason; with rigorous logic, he lunged at the emotions. He made a passion of decency. He was a prudent revolutionary. Among the last of his surviving words is a warning to Thomas Paine: "Happy is he who is cautious.

Los políticos son demasiado tontos para que nosotros podamos prever sus acciones aplicando la razón

In science, restraint was necessary: there were questions that one was not allowed to put to the world - and he who nevertheless put them was like one who complained about a mirror whose reflection repeated his every movement but refused to reveal to him the volitional reason behind those movements.

Postmodernism is the Enlightenment gone mad.

Buddhism, it seemed, was a rational religion, whose truth-claims could withstand the test of reason.

Feuerbach argued that the function of religion was to project the essential human qualities of reason, love, and will onto the nonhuman and transcendent figure of God, who then becomes an object of worship.

Schönerer, he related in Mein Kampf how much he had learned during his years in Vienna from watching the mayor's skill in flattering the urban proletariat, and in understanding that the less propaganda is based on intellectual appeals and reason, and the more on "the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be.

Not everyone has a sob story, Charlie, and even if they do, it's no excuse." That

To me, reason is as spiritual as anything else, the beauty of reason seems to me indelible and ineffable and numinous... the spirit is after all the same word we use to describe... essence

Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.

If we find the answer to that (why the universe exists), it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason. For then we would know the mind of God.

why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.

Sin embargo, si descubrimos una teoría completa, debería en su momento ser comprensible en sus líneas generales por todos, no solo por unos pocos científicos. Entonces todos seremos capaces de tomar parte en la discusión de por qué el universo existe. Si encontramos la respuesta a ello, sería el triunfo definitivo de la razón humana, pues entonces conoceríamos la mente de Dios.

Se descobríssemos a resposta para isso [a razão pela qual o Universo existe], seria o triunfo derradeiro da razão humana — pois aí conheceríamos a mente de Deus.

However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God.

For every mother who ever cursed God for her child dead in the road, for every father who ever cursed the man who sent him away from the factory with no job, for every child who was ever born to pain and asked why, this is the answer. Our lives are like these things I build. Sometimes they fall down for a reason, sometimes they fall down for no reason at all.