Quotes About Reason

It is on our bodies that the law must go to work, not only on our minds. Reason must govern in collusion with the senses it subdues, rather as an astute sovereign rules in a way that allows each citizen to feel that he is doing no more than obeying the diktats of his own desires.

The most important rule there is, the Wizard's Sixth Rule: the only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.

Wizard's Third Rule Passion rules reason, for better or for worse.

Faith and feelings are the warm marrow of evil. Unlike reason, faith and feelings provide no boundary to limit any delusion, any whim. They are virulent poison, giving the numbing illusion of moral sanction to every depravity ever hatched. Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason's light. Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason. In rejecting it, in rejecting reason, one embraces death.

This was life as it should be lived—proud, reasoned, and a slave to no other man.

The ability to reason is what gives us our capacity to have empathy for others, to value life itself. Our ability to judge right from wrong, to value all life, is only possible through our ability to reason. Reason is what powers morality.

Celebrating faith over reason is merely a way of denying what is, in favor of embracing any whim that strikes your fancy.

The only sovereign we could allow to rule us is reason.

Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason's light. "Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason, through this rule. In rejecting it, in rejecting reason, one embraces death.

This was life as it should be lived—proud, reasoned, and a slave to no other man. This was the rightful exaltation of the individual, the nobility of the human spirit.

She had lived her whole life on shifting quicksand, where reason and the intellect were not to be trusted, where only faith was valid, and blind faith was sacred. She, herself, had enforced mindless conformity to that empty evil.

An adversary is not one who does loathsome acts for their own sake. He always has a reason that to him is justification. My cat eats mice. Does that make him bad? I don't think so, and the cat doesn't think so, but I would bet the mice have a different opinion.

reason is our only way of grasping reality—that it's our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking—to reject reason—but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see.

Oftentimes it's easier for lunatics to attract impassioned followers than it is for sensible people to get people to listen to reason. People are often more willing to believe lies than the truth. Lies can be made to sound pleasant. The truth, by its very nature, isn't always so attractive.

But you know how Richard feels. He thinks it would be wrong—more than that, he thinks it would be irresponsible to give in to such a wish when reason tells him he must not.

He wanted this to show the raw power of volition. The man and woman he carved were his refuge against his despair over his captivity. They embodied freedom of spirit. They embodied reason rising up to triumph.

Teachings that defy reason defy reality; what defies reality defies life. Defying life is embracing death.

Wizard's Sixth Rule: the only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.

Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason's light.

Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason, through this rule. In rejecting it, in rejecting reason, one embraces death.

Surprise was their greatest weapon. He didn't want to give it up without a very good reason.

panicked people didn't listen to reason and didn't want to hear the truth.

It wasn't possible to reason with people who were irrational. That was what made irrational people so profoundly dangerous.

The most important rule there is, the Wizard's Sixth Rule: the only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.