Quotes About Reason

The weak generally mistrust the justice and the reason of the strong.

One must go to America to understand what power material well-being exerts on political actions and even on opinions themselves, which ought to be subject only to reason.

If, instead of all the diverse powers which excessively hindered or slowed down the flight of reason of the individual, democratic nations substituted the absolute power of a majority, only the character of this social ill would have been changed. Men would not have achieved the means of living independently; they would simply have lighted upon—a difficult enough task in itself—a new face of enslavement.

we limit ourselves to normal cases of mutual influence, we find that those people are most capable of being influenced who are most amenable to reason and logic, those whose social feeling has been least distorted. On the contrary, those who thirst for superiority and desire domination are very difficult to influence. Observation teaches us this fact every day.

Once I knew nothing about McKay and now I knew everything about him. This seemed as good as any reason for not walking out the door. There are so many ways to stop the knowing, and I tried them all. I tried silence, I tried heroin, I tried calling it love. And then I stopped trying to call my dumbness any one of ten thousand names.

Just because we don't know it or understand it doesn't mean there's not a reason.

It is for this reason that

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; … Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; … Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.53

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.

DAWN, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

In the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent

Always the ones quickest to insults got the thinnest skin, for some reason.

Folk she'd known to be big on religion had tended to use it as an excuse for doing wrong rather'n a reason not to.

Many of us are alarmed at the skyrocketing cost of medical care, including patients, who are the consumers. However, medical malpractice is not the reason for these increasing costs.

History, faith, and reason show the way--the way of unity. We can see each other, not as adversaries, but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.

She had learned from Jakob to think of people who spoke of blessings and faith as simple and a little infirm. People who thought things happened for a reason were to be pitied. Such folk had given up their curiosity about the universe for a comforting children's story.

You and your beard and your big leather jacket and your big black car and your huge black boots. Nobody wears this much armor unless it has been hurt by someone who had no reason to hurt him.

Now it was brisk and didactic, like that of an obedience instructor training an obstinant dog, and I hated him for it, the hate momentarily eclipsing all fear and reason.

your words are pure poison, Master Reynold,' said Lesthen. 'You and your kind suffer from the worst disease of humanity, the willingness to subordinate truth, to lock reason in chains and to rape the objective thought, in order to achieve your objective.

They were the progressives, the freethinkers, the radicals of their day. History favoured such people. They had brought great change, and great innovation, and the present was all the greater for their inspiration. But now, Ibrahim believed, the pendulum had swung too far. The Great Cause had become merely an ideology, and ideology, Ibrahim knew only too well, was the antithesis of reason.

And while there's so much wisdom that I don't know, I know that evil doesn't happen for a cosmic reason, a 'balance of good' bullshit. Evil happens because it can, because circumstances allow it to take place. And you build your own sanctuary against it to keep yourself sane, to keep yourself fighting it.

Shadows gripped him at the thought. If Thomas changed his mind once Marcos got his grief and emotional shit under control, if he tried to withdraw again... Marcus knew he didn't have the energy left to fight him. After all the harrowing years when he never let himself entertain the notion, even in his darkest moment, Marcus now knew he would have a compelling reason to take his own life.

These are strange times. Reason, which once combatted faith and seemed to have conquered it, now has to look to faith to save it from dissolution.

We do not act because we know, but we know because we are destined for action; practical reason is the root of all reason.