Quotes About Reason

Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loop-holes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception which reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.

I and all men have only one firm, incontestable, clear knowledge, and that knowledge cannot be explained by the reason--it is outside it, and has no causes and can have no effects. "If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.

We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.

The answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given, because I could not have got it from anywhere. "Where could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him?

But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one's neighbor reason could never discover, because it's irrational.

If we allow that human life can be governed by reason, the possibility of life is annihilated

every time there have been conquests there have been conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in any state there have been great men," says history. And, indeed, human reason replies: every time conquerors appear there have been wars, but this does not prove that the conquerors caused the wars and that it is possible to find the laws of a war in the personal activity of a single man.

Dac? ar fi s? admitem c? via?a omului poate fi condus? numai de ra?iune, atunci s-ar nimic îns??i posibilitatea vie?ii.

If there were no external means of dulling their sensibilities, half of mankind would shoot themselves without delay, for to live in opposition to one's reason is the most intolerable condition. And that is the condition of all men of the present day. All men of the modern world exist in a state of continual and flagrant antagonism between their conscience and their way of life.

He suffered ever the same unceasing agonies and in his loneliness pondered always on the same insoluble question: "What is this? Can it be that it is Death?" And the inner voice answered: Yes, it is Death. "Why these sufferings?" And the voice answered, For no reason—they just are so.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.

either the war is insanity, or the people, if they do this insanity, aren't not at all reasonable creatures, as some might , for some reason, think.

Now, in that moment, he knew that neither all his doubts, nor the impossibility he knew in himself of believing by means of reason, hindered him in the least from addressing God. It all blew off his soul like dust.

Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.

De acuerdo con la fé, para comprender el sentido de la vida debía renunciar a la razón, la misma para la cual es necesario el sentido.

If the conception of freedom appears to reason a senseless contradiction, like the possibility of performing two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature.

Reason discovered the struggle for existence and the law requiring that we oppress everyone who impedes the gratification of our desires. That is reason's conclusion. But loving one's fellow man reason could not discover because it is not reasonable.

Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one's neighbor reason could never discover, because it's irrational.

Pierre's insanity consisted in the fact that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and, loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.

I'll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray—but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!

La razón no ha descubierto que se amase al prójimo, porque eso no es razonable. Constantino Levin

Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole of mankind receive that meaning in irrational knowledge. And that irrational knowledge is faith, that very thing which I could not but reject. It is God, One in Three; the creation in six days; the devils and angels, and all the rest that I cannot accept as long as I retain my reason.

Simonson was one of those people, chiefly of a masculine type, whose actions follow the dictates of their reason and are determined by it. Novodvorov belonged, on the contrary, to the class of people of a feminine type, whose reason is directed partly towards the attainment of aims set by their feelings, partly to the justification of acts instigated by their feelings.