Quotes About Reason

Cuanto más viene a ocuparse una razón cultivada del propósito relativo al disfrute de la vida y la felicidad, tanto más alejado queda el hombre de la verdadera satisfacción.

To behold virtue in her proper form is nothing else but to contemplate morality stripped of all admixture of sensible things and of every spurious ornament of reward or self-love. How much she then eclipses everything else that appears charming to the affections, every one may readily perceive with the least exertion of his reason, if it be not wholly spoiled for abstraction.

I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith. ? Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own.

A Critique of pure Reason, i.e. of our faculty of judging a priori according to principles, would be incomplete, if the Judgement, which as a cognitive faculty also makes claim to such principles, were not treated as a particular part of it; although its principles in a system of pure Philosophy need form no particular part between the theoretical and the practical, but can be annexed when needful to one or both as occasion requires.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

The public use of one's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men.

Wir erkennen von den Dingen a priori nur das, was wir selbst in sie hineingelegt haben.

We now concern ourselves with a labor less spectacular but nevertheless not unrewarding: that of making the terrain for these majestic moral edifices level and firm enough to be built upon; for under this ground there are all sorts of passageways, such as moles might have dug, left over from reason's vain but confident treasure hunting, that make every building insecure. (A319/B377)

the doctrine of morals is an autonomy of practical reason, while the doctrine of virtue is at the same time an autocracy of practical reason.

There can be only one reason why we must do what duty demands, and that is that we demand it of ourselves.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: La felicidad no brota de la razón sino de la imaginación (Immanuel Kant)

whose true object is to shed the clearest light on every step which reason takes.

The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.

R]eason of itself, independent on all experience, ordains what ought to take place, that accordingly actions of which perhaps the world has hitherto never given an example, the feasibility even if which might be very much doubted by one who founds everything on experience, are nevertheless inflexibly commanded by reason; that, for example, even though there might never yet have been a sincere friend, yet not a whit the less is pure sincerity in friendship required of every man...

Imitation finds no place at all in morality, and examples serve only for encouragement, that is, they put beyond doubt the feasibility of what the law commands, they make visible that which the practical rule expresses more generally, but they can never authorize us to set aside the true original which lies in reason, and to guide ourselves by examples.

Act upon a maxim which, at the same time, involves its own universal validity for every rational being.

For human reason, without any instigations imputable to the mere vanity of great knowledge, unceasingly progresses, urged on by its own feeling of need, towards such questions as cannot be answered by any empirical application of reason, or principles derived therefrom; and so there has ever really existed in every man some system of metaphysics.

We have no reason for assuming the form of such a thing to be still partly dependent on blind mechanism, for with such confusion of heterogeneous principles every reliable rule for estimating things would disappear.

For when we allow the arguments of reason to oppose one another with perfect freedom, something useful and serviceable for the correction of our judgements will always result, though it may not always be what we were looking for.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: La felicidad no es un ideal de la razón, sino de la imaginación (Immanuel Kant)

Would it not therefore be wiser in moral concerns to acquiesce in the judgement of common reason, or at most only to call in philosophy for the purpose of rendering the system of morals more complete and intelligible, and its rules more convenient for use (especially for disputation), but not so as to draw off the common understanding from its happy simplicity, or to bring it by means of philosophy into a new path of inquiry and instruction?

reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design;

Rectitude is the power of deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, without wavering—to die when it is right to die, to strike when to strike is right.