Quotes About Reason

Reason and emotion must both work together to create intelligent behavior, but emotion does most of the work.

Western philosophy has been worshipping reason and distrusting the passions for thousands of years.4 There's a direct line running from Plato through Immanuel Kant to Lawrence Kohlberg. I'll refer to this worshipful attitude throughout this book as the rationalist delusion.

What makes social and political arguments conservative as opposed to orthodox is that the critique of liberal or progressive arguments takes place on the enlightened grounds of the search for human happiness based on the use of reason.35 As a lifelong liberal, I had assumed that conservatism = orthodoxy = religion = faith = rejection of science.

David Hume, who wrote in 1739 that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. We all need to take a cold hard look at the evidence and see reasoning for what it is.

Passions often corrupt reason, but if we can learn to control those passions, our God-given rationality will shine forth and guide us to do the right thing, not the popular thing.

Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment—originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit.18

For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. —ST. PAUL, GALATIANS 5:171   If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN1,2

Morality binds and blinds. This is not just something that happens to people on the other side. We all get sucked into tribal moral communities. We circle around sacred values and then share post hoc arguments about why we are so right and they are so wrong. We think the other side is blind to truth, reason, science, and common sense, but in fact everyone goes blind when talking about their sacred objects. If

a reason why not. And—and, let's pretend

Truth and logic could serve as springboards for psychosis.

We are biological creatures. We are born, we live, we die. There is no transcendent purpose to existence. At best we are creatures of reason, and by using reason we can cure ourselves of emotional excess. Purged of both hope and fear, we find courage in the face of helplessness, insignificance and uncertainty.

Read any Comments section on the Web, and you will see what this means: the replacement of reason by anger, and argument by vilification. Civility is dying, and when it dies, civilisation itself is in danger.

It is terrifying in retrospect to grasp how seriously the Torah took the phenomenon of xenophobia, hatred of the stranger. It is as if the Torah were saying with the utmost clarity: reason is insufficient. Sympathy is inadequate. Only the force of history and memory is strong enough to form a counterweight to hate.

We should not tell lies because if everyone else did, no one would trust us and the practice of communication on which lying depends would be undermined. Immorality is a kind of self-contradiction. Reason allows us to think our way through to virtue.

Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it's rarely driving the car.

A set of phrases learnt by rote;A passion for a scarlet coat;When at a play to laugh, or cry,Yet cannot tell the reason why:Never to hold her tongue a minute;While all she prates has nothing in it.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

Phillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored.

We have always been a family of fighters and spectators. Intervening with reason and consideration demonstrates a dangerous cultural ignorance.

raised in a family that was spared the major convulsions of history and that, having never experienced absolute arbitrariness, thought that if people were arrested, well then, there had to be a reason.

Let him make use of instinct who cannot make use of reason.

The dangerous thing about hate is that it seems so reasonable." --from The Chalk Garden

The dangerous thing about hate is that it seems so reasonable.