Quotes About Reason

Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and style which has most power to move men... It's object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and last hold of the imagination. (p.162/543)

Passion without reason is blind, reason without passion is dead. Thought should not lack the heat of desire, nor desire the light of thought.

a barbarian was a man content to believe without reason and to live without liberty.

I know nothing so indecent," he said, "as these vague declamations of the theologians against reason. To hear them one would suppose that men could not enter into the bosom of Christianity except as a herd of cattle enters a stable.

Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and style which has most power to move men... It's object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and last hold of the imagination. (Chapter on Spinoza, p.162/543)

Come, brave Diderot, intrepid d'Alembert, ally yourselves; . . . overwhelm the fanatics and the knaves, destroy the insipid declamations, the miserable sophistries, the lying history, . . . the absurdities without number; do not let those who have sense be subjected to those who have none; and the generation which is being born will owe to us its reason and its liberty.

I do not wish to belittle reason, but it should be the servant of love, not of pride.

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.

Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy. ... The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. ... Dip him in the river who loves water. ... A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. ... The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure. ... Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.

People think all the answers are in here – with the brain. Reason, intelligence, deduction. They think thinking will solve all problems.' He put his hand over his heart. 'But no – the answers are here. Your heart will tell you what is right or wrong. Your best guide through life

I am as sane as you are.

Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.

It (the talking, the telling) seemed (to him, to Quentin) to partake of that logic- and reason-flouting quality of a dream which the sleeper knows must have occurred, stillborn and complete, in a second, yet the very quality upon which it must depend to move the dreamer (verisimilitude) to credulity _horror or pleasure or amazement_ depends as completely upon a formal recognition of and acceptance of elapsed and yet-elapsing time as music or a printed tale.

And older still, he might have divined the true reason: that the element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring of his father's being, as the element of steel or of powder spoke to other men, as the one weapon for the preservation of integrity.

We've had the goddam Ages of Faith, we've had the goddam Age of Reason. This is the Age of Publicity

What greater comfort does time afford, than the objects of terror re-encountered, and their fraudulence exposed in the flash of reason?

Suffer barbaric childhood to give and receive remorselessly; civilized age learns to protect what it has, to neither give nor accept freely, to trust it's own mistrust above faith, and intriguing others above the innocent. Intrigue, after all, is rational, something the mind can sink it's teeth into, and defeat it with the good digestion of reason, a hopeless prospect for the toothless heart, and God only knows what innocence will do next.

Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn't you?' said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. 'You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they are?

The two boys faced each other. There was a brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled common sense.

Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason whi it's no go? Why things are what they are?

Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!" said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they are?

Now that his physical voice was silent, the inner voice of reason, and other voices too, made themselves heard.

Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they are?