Quotes About Reason

Hell, rationality itself—the exalted Human ability to reason—hadn't evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will.

She spun a hundred-eighty degrees at the end of the passageway, landed like an acrobat beside the drum hatch. "The reason. Why something would attack us even if we didn't have anything it wanted." I read it off her: "If it wasn't attacking at all. If it was defending itself.

We can use logic when we want to, of course. We have tools of reason at our command; but according to at least some experts1 we have those tools not to glean truth from falsehood but to help us win arguments; to make others do what we want; to use as a weapon. It's rhetoric and manipulation that evolution selected for: logic just tagged along as a side effect. Sweeping oratory, rational debate, it's all just a way to bend others to your will.

properly basic belief' is any belief that's rational to hold without its being based on any other beliefs

Call it peace or call it treason, call it love or call it reason, but I ain't marching anymore.

T]he probabilistic nature of the Schrödinger equation, which predicts only the likelihood of different experimental outcomes, leaves it offering no reason why one specific outcome is observed instead of another. In effect, it says that quantum events (the radioactive decay of an atom, say) happen for no reason.

You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp its seat, and rule in its stead.

We mortals can be fools, especially when mortal emotions rule over cool reason.

it seems to me that the merit of any belief can be judged by the lengths people go to defend it. Poor, incomprehensible beliefs demand rigorous support. Defying reason and experience, they require the muscle of state and religion to maintain. Conversely, when a belief is so observably and obviously true, when it resonates with our experience, when it transcends cultures and eras, it requires no defense.

In order to decide, judge; in order to judge, reason; in order to reason, decide (what to reason about).

Reason cannot save us, nothing can; but reason can mitigate the cruelty of living.

I'm definitely doing better. I never realized that I would get the support that I've gotten from everybody - from my fans, to people that I've idolized my whole life. So it's overwhelming, it's amazing and I believe that everything happens for a reason so I'm in a really good place right now.

We survive, in the confusion of a life reborn beyond reason.

Ces châteaux et ces cathédrales n'ont pu être bâtis par des chétifs ni par des tristes. Il y a à la fois une raison et une audace de la raison dans le plan des cathédrales qui ne peuvent être comprises seulement comme l'effet d'une ardente foi extra-terrestre, mais comme confiance dans la vie, joie de vivre, affirmation exubérante de l'immédiat.

politics cannot be separated from the great human and cosmic perspectives That are opened up for us by our recognition of a transcendent universality - Reason or Nature - which, by means of its harmony with itself, founds both people's love for one another and their love for that Whole of which they are the part.

The only reason that you do visual is solely for the visual. That's the only reason. It doesn't sell your music for you.

I'm a big fan of film for one reason: because it is visual.

On the one hand I follow a vocation because I have an ability that I should exercise, but I want to use it for a reason, because I don't see that the freedoms that I enjoy are God-given realities. So I have a very healthy, activist general tension in me which feels that no, this is not gratuitous, it is important to keep this in focus.

Vogue and I weren't looking for a serious relationship at the time we met and I think that's probably part of the reason why we became so close as friends first.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.

The Lashley that you see on the screen is Lashley when he's his own personality turned way up. MVP is me, with my volume, my personality volume on 11. If you look, that's the reason that we work so well.

Amartya Sen is best known to the general reader for his powerful essays on famine. He is an optimist about some of our gravest economic problems, such as mass starvation in a world that at present can easily produce more food than everyone can eat. Reason and voluntary participation are his watchwords.

I won't make games with senseless violence. There has to be a reason for it, such as war.

We have to really appeal to that sensible center.