Quotes About Reason

Her reason partly agreed, her instinct wholly rebelled.

Another terrific reason for not having children: it was so disturbing when animals ate them.

The spanning of the bridge between desire—thinking of—and satisfaction—thinking from—is all-important. We must move mentally from thinking of the end to thinking from the end. This, reason could never do. By its nature it is restricted to the evidence of the senses; but imagination, having no such limitation, can. Desire exists to be gratified in the activity of imagination. Through imagination man escapes from the limitation of the senses and the bondage of reason.

Everything, that can be seen, touched, explained, argued over, is to the imaginative man nothing more than a means, for he functions, by reason of his controlled imagination, in the deep of himself where every idea exists in itself and not in relation to something else. In him there is no need for the restraints of reason, for the only restraint he can obey is the mysterious instinct that teaches him to eliminate all moods other than the mood of fulfilled desire.

Buddhism is reason. Reason will win over your lord.

With the failure of the imagination to present form the mind discovers that it has the capacity to conceive of the infinite, and thus has the power to transcend everything that sense can measure and thus present. The sublime feeling in this case arises from the play between the finite nature of the senses and the infinite capacity of reason.

It is not possible, says Weber, to confer the objective validity of facts on the basis of a value-judgement; and second, it is not possible to judge the value of values through the use of scientific reason. This leads him to maintain a distinction between science and ethics, the former dealing with questions of fact, the latter with questions of value.

Weber insists that the value of science is always to be questioned and not simply presupposed... He is... critical of the presupposition which underlies Strauss' position, namely that scientific reason is necessarily of value.

Poetry, she thought, wasn't written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

here is the second large point, to go through The Satanic Verses with the squinting eye of a censor searching for thought crimes, or even to seek to see it in the round, as I have tried to do, is to blind yourself to the real reason why the fatwa against Salman Rushdie became the Dreyfus Affair of our age.

Kant's great discovery—but one that he never admitted to—was that apodictic reason is incompatible with knowledge. Such reason must be 'transcendental'. This is a word that has been propagated with enthusiasm, but only because Kant simultaneously provided a method of misreading it. To be transcendental is to be 'free' of reality. This is surely the most elegant euphemism in the history of Western philosophy.

Is there a reason for a literate person to read century-old pulp fiction?

It is not what we do that is important. It is why we do it.

In the intelligent man faith is the only remedy for anguish. The fool is cured by "reason," "progress," alcohol, work.

Modern stupidities are more irritating than ancient stupidities because their proselytes seek to justify them in the name of reason.

To be right is just one more reason not to achieve any success.

Linke und Rechte sind durch die verschiedenen Deutungen charakterisiert, die sie dem zweideutigen Motto geben, das Goya für ein Capricho wählt: "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos." Die Linke übersetzt: schlafen. Die Rechte: träumen.

Reactionary thought has been accused of irrationalism because it refuses to sacrifice the canons of reason to the prejudices of the day. The root of reactionary thought is not distrust of reason but distrust of the will.

Our freedom has no other guarantee than the barricades which the anarchic countenance of the world throws up against the imperialism of reason.

It is upon the antinomies of reason, upon the scandals of the spirit, upon the ruptures in the universe, that I base my hope and my faith.

The war in the Vendée is the only political conflict that arouses my complete sympathy without troubling my reason.

Authentic atheism is as important to human intelligence as infinity is to imagination.

Il est certains esprits dont les sombres pensées Sont d'un nuage épais toujours embarrassées ; Le jour de la raison ne le saurait percer. Avant donc que d'écrire, apprenez à penser. Selon que notre idée est plus ou moins obscure, L'expression la suit, ou moins nette, ou plus pure. Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.

Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.