Quotes About Reason

The German Empire had in its best time existed by grace of God and force of circumstances, more than by reason of a sound and perfect organism.

For I had felt too much and reasoned too little, hearing what I was ready to hear, not what had been said. There

Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavor to settle that power on a divine right which will not bear the investigation of reason.

The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason.

Within reason" is not the sort of place one can easily find on a map; in fact, its location may vary considerably from one day to the next.

There is no way to get everything in life: You either cultivate your own reason and give precedence to virtue above all else, or you desperately go after externals. You will either give priority to things within you, or to those outside of you. There is a trade-off, and you have to decide which way to go.

For the Stoics, what distinguishes our species is the ability to reason and our high degree of sociality, from which it follows that we should spend our existence intent in using our mind to improve social living.

Secular humanism rightly looks to reason and science, but lingering there is not enough. Religions hasten to tie secularism down to materialism, and link materialism with egoism, nihilism, and anarchy. Compared to that portrayal, spirituality or even supernaturalism might look sane and safe.

Stoics shifted the emphasis very much toward the social, essentially arguing that the point of life for human beings is to use reason to build the best society that it is humanly possible to build.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.-Adam Smith

Et surtout, les livres. Ils étaient, en eux même, une raison de rester en vie.

Where we are from there is no remorse because action has a logical motive and always results in the best outcome for the given situation.

The only reason I am still in this life is because of you . . .' She lunged forward and kissed him.

Now I'm a glorified bureaucrat holding on by my fingernails as we all slide into super-powered chaos. A voice of reason in a world gone mad.

Even in his books, where he's allegedly trying to string multiple thoughts together, Trump wanders randomly from impulse to impulse, seemingly without rhyme or reason. He doesn't think anything through. (He's brilliantly cast this driving-blind trait as "not being politically correct.") It

To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this: 1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason. 2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right. 3. Charity is immoral. 4. Pay for your own fucking schools.

He who works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.

Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves, and to prevent our getting the notion of a paramount right reason.

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.' An Englishman named John Harrington said that, all the way back around the year 1600.

The mark of a well-constituted state is that it makes it possible "to avoid the follies of appetite and to keep men within the bounds of reason, as far as possible, that they may live in peace and harmony.

The present is an age of philosophy; and America, the empire of reason," said the American revolutionary Joel Barlow. 5 I aim to show that he was mostly right about that.

To think freely about things is also to separate ourselves from the flesh we are crammed into. To escape from that limiting cage that is our flesh, to break free of our chains and take flight into pure reason. In reason lies the natural life. That's what is at the core of freedom of thought." (66)

There was the obvious answer--it was random, senseless, genetic, environmental--but she didn't like that one. She also knew she couldn't sign on to any system that said it has all happened for a reason. So she took a third path, the pragmatic one. It hadn't happened for a reason, but they would find something to glean from it anyway.

Can you give me one reason why I should go on living?" This book is a humble response to that question, for happiness is above all a love of life. To have lost all reason for living is to open up an abyss of suffering. As influential as external conditions may be, suffering, like well-being, is essentially an interior state. Understanding that is the key prerequisite to a life worth living.