Quotes About Reason

There are two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. The supreme achievement of reason is to realise that there is a limit to reason. Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realise that.

I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.

If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.

If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.

And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.

When there is a fight of reason versus emotion and the mind wonders which one to follow, in most times, emotion wins over reason. But it is reason that should win and emotion shouldn't.

The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.

There's a reason why trainspotters are not girls, there's a reason why there's the myth of the slightly autistic male genius, there's a reason why Gertrude Stein believed that her self-presentation was male. One could argue that was Susan Sontag also. The things that we associate with femaleness are not the single-minded, exclusive pursuit of a vocation, whether it be art or anything else. It is not a model that is widespread in our culture, it's not something we think of for women.

I'm a Spinozist. I believe in reason. I think all the progress that we've made making this a better world have been because of reason and not religion. I think religion has been pulled along by reason and that's why we read The Bible now so differently, even believers.

You've got this guy who refuses to die for some reason whether it be a physical or metaphysical reason or spiritual reason so you can do anything. You can kill off anybody and you can still bring them back because he's kind of half there and half in reality, you know?

There are so many fantastic roles, but the ones that have always drawn me to them are the loners who, for whatever reason, never quite fit in and knew it and had to find their own way. I've always been drawn to that, for some reason. I've always been drawn to that sad, isolated place, but what it produces in behavior is something else, entirely. For whatever reason, I'm drawn to these people. Essentially, I think what draws me is that they are survivors against rather considerable odds.

So let's set the record straight. Faith is not the opposite of reason. The opposite of faith is unbelief. And reason is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of reason is irrationality. Do some Christians have irrational faith? Sure. Do some skeptics have unreasonable unbelief? You bet. It works both ways.

You can see a lot about our mission on our website, but the basic idea is that the church believes that understanding human beings and the Earth requires not only faith but also reason, and not only philosophical reason but also scientific reason.

Reason has never really directed social reality, but now reason has been so thoroughly purged of any specific trend or preference that it has finally renounced even the task of passing judgment on man's actions and way of life. Reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the conflicting interests to which our world actually seems abandoned.

Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason.

A why has to be for others. It's something you give to the world. It's the reason your friends love you because this is the thing that you give them and it fulfills them. This is the reason your clients love you or your fans love you because you give them something. It's something to offer, that's what the why is.

How can days and happenings and moments so good become so quickly ugly, and for no reason, for no real reason? Just - change. With nothing causing it.

It's like he would take a photograph of Sam, and the photograph would be beautiful. And he would think that the reason the photograph was beautiful was because of how he took it. If I took it, I would know that the only reason it's beautiful is because of Sam.

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin - a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.

Ask me no reason why I love you; for though Love use Reason for his physician, he admits him not for his counsellor.

If you always have something in your life that you're trying to improve upon, then every day you have a reason to get out of bed, and you have a reason to achieve something and feel good.

Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason

Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.

As far as I remember, even younger than eight, I have always been guided by reason. Not cold reason, but that which leads to the truth, to the real, and to sane Justice.

There is a reason you keep hearing about the power of educating girls in the developing world. Its a reason so simple that you will probably view it with suspicion, as I once did. It's this: educating girls works. Really works.

When you have a position, you put it on for a reason, and you've got to keep it until the reason no longer exists.

I love reading people. I really enjoy watching, observing, and being able to figure out a person, the reason they wore that dress, the reason they smell the way they do.

Bible revelations are not against reason but above reason, for the uses of faith, mans highest faculty.

Already a couple of the faithful have sent in checks for a foundation memorial to the innocents who perished at the hands of the ninja at Waco. ... I have been criticized by referring to our federal masked men as "ninja" ... Let us reflect upon the fact that a man who covers his face shows reason to be ashamed of what he is doing. A man who takes it upon himself to shed blood while concealing his identity is a revolting perversion of the warrior ethic. It has long been my conviction that a masked man with a gun is a target. I see no reason to change that view.

The reason we start things is rarely the reason we continue them.

See your weakness as a reason to pray the more, it should not be the reason for sadness or to abandon your post.

One of the things this world is finding is that emotion is the basis of reason. We really have to trust our emotions, which are much smarter than our reason in some ways.

Pity on the person who has become accustomed to seeing in necessity something arbitrary, who ascribes to the arbitrary some sort of reason, and even claims that following that sort of reason has religious value.

And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day .... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it.

History is the long struggle of man, by exercise of his reason, to understand his environment and to act upon it. But the modern period has broadened the struggle in a revolutionary way. Man now seeks to understand, and act on, not only his environment, but himself; and this has added, so to speak, a new dimension to reason and a new dimension to history.

Why you need a reason for everything? Reason is something people say to make sense of things that don't make sense.

Before I met her, I drank and swore without reason... now I have a reason.

You can't reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.

To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.

As for being somewhere you're not supposed to be - maybe you're here for a reason, or there is no reason.

Like the people that in the 60s or 70s claimed the "end of painting" - all they did was open up a whole new branch for painting. Happily, it doesn't work. It's not a reason for art. Closing something out is not a reason for something to exist.

One reason we would use plant medicine: to be able to take care of the body as a whole. Another reason is that it is accessible, approachable, and requires few invasive methods.

With no reason to hide these words I feel, and no reason to talk about the books I read, but still, I do.

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can't reason without them.

There is no reason to believe that the people who staff the managerial and professional positions in our service institutions are any less qualified, any less competent or honest, or any less hard-working than the men who manage businesses. Conversely, there is no reason to believe that business managers, put in control of service institutions, would do better than the 'bureaucrats'. Indeed, we know that they immediately become bureaucrats themselves.

Love doesn't need a reason. Hate needs a reason.

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

That was my decision, so I have to be responsible for that. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life and I don't have a good reason for why I wanted to come back, I don't have a good reason for doing it all.