Quotes About Reason

Does God have a reason for wanting us to be charitable, to take care of those who can't take care of themselves? Either God does or God doesn't, it's just logic. If God has a reason then there is a reason independent of God and whatever God's reason is we should figure it out for ourselves. There is a reason and God doesn't really ground morality at all. God wants us to give charity because it's the right thing to do.

The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists exists; what is is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality–it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see." -Richard

I destroy because for me everything that proceeds from reason is untrustworthy. I believe only in the evidence of what stirs my marrow, not in the evidence of what addresses itself to my reason. I have found levels in the realm of the nerve. I now feel capable of evaluating the evidence. There is for me an evidence in the realm of pure flesh which has nothing to do with the evidence of reason. The eternal conflict between reason and the heart is decided in my very flesh, but in my flesh irrigated by nerves.

The indispensability argument says (roughly) that if you have ample reason to accept an empirical scientific theory that makes indispensable use of mathematics, and that theory entails that numbers exist, then you have ample reason to accept that numbers exist. The argument affirms the antecedent of this conditional, and concludes that you have ample reason to believe that numbers exist. What is striking about this argument is that it seems to show that the empirical reasons that suffice for accepting a scientific theory also suffice for accepting a metaphysical claim.

Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.

When people give you their stated reason for doing something always assume they are giving you a reason that sounds good, but not the real reason.

How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.

I think we need to find a way to provide people with a reason that the average man on the street can grasp and embrace, that would cause him to move away from the centuries-old idea of the individual and individualism, and move toward a different concept of what it means to be human in a collective society. Unless he has that reason, unless he has a fundamental reason to do that, it's going to be very difficult to cause him to make that shift, in my view.

To love someone properly probably means that you won’t be very popular. Pure love, loving the way it was intended, is unfortunately a foreign concept to many. Love is messy. Love will involve hardship, demand patience, require forgiveness, test maturity, strain friendship, challenge priorities, refine character, ignite the heart and unleash the soul. Love is not something you sing about, it’s the reason you sing. Love is not something you write about, it’s the reason you write. Love is not something you live to find, it’s the reason that you are alive.

The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

Suppose I grant that pigs and dogs are self-aware to some degree, and do have thoughts about things in the future. That would provide some reason for thinking it intrinsically wrong to kill them - not absolutely wrong, but perhaps quite a serious wrong. Still, there are other animals - chickens maybe, or fish - who can feel pain but don't have any self-awareness or capacity for thinking about the future. For those animals, you haven't given me any reason why painless killing would be wrong, if other animals take their place and lead an equally good life.

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason. Let us be like the man of the frontier and always reveal with utmost honesty our real reasons for all that we do.

All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.

The reason I became a manager was to have full control over training. If you are a coach, you are bound by what the manager wants you to coach. The other reason is that I just like the company of football people.

What happened on that day (of Easter) became, was and remained the centre around which everything else moves. For everything lasts its time, but the love of God - which was at work and was expressed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead - lasts forever. Because this event took place, there is no reason to despair, and even when we read the newspaper with all its confusing and frightening news, there is every reason to hope.

Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.

There are so many kinds of madness, so many ways in which the human brain may go wrong; and so often it happens that what we call madness is both reasonable and just. It is so. Yes. A little reason is good for us, a little more makes wise men of some of us--but when our reason over-grows us and we reach too far, something breaks and we go insane.

People think of faith as being something that you don't really believe, a device in helping you believe simply it. Of course that is quite wrong. As Pascal says, faith is a gift of God. It is different from the proof of it. It is the kind of faith God himself places in the heart, of which the proof is often the instrument... He says of it, too, that it is the heart which is aware of God, and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not be reason.

I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.

I definitely admire Blair Walsh the most. He's actually a pretty close friend of mine. Just how he went through his senior year at Georgia, I kind of went through the same struggles. He's been able to coach me through everything and help me. Everyone is there for a reason, and they're all great. On and off the field, there's a reason they're there.

Reason is not like the goods sold in the market places--the more plentiful they are, the less they are worth. Reason's worth waxes with her abundance. But were she sold in the market, it is only the wise man who would understand her true value.

I had it then. Soda fought for fun, Steve for hatred, Darry for pride, and Two-Bit for conformity. Why do I fight? I thought, and couldn't think of any real good reason. There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.

Some people will follow their minds without listening to their hearts, and others will follow their hearts without listening to their minds. This is why reason exists, for there to be balance between the heart and mind. We were not meant to follow the mind and ignore the heart. Instead, we were meant to follow the heart over the mind, but without completely abandoning logic. The middle way is the preferred way, and this path simply means to allow your heart to drive you, but do not forget to balance reason with your conscience.

Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it.

Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars, points of light and reason. ...And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason, for anything.

To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.

He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third.

Catholicism is contrary to human liberty. Catholicism bases salvation upon belief. Catholicism teaches man to trample his reason under foot. And for that reason it is wrong.

Woodworking requires a completely different kind of thinking and problem-solving ability than writing. With writing, you take a set of facts and ideas, and you reason your way forward to a story that pulls them together. With woodworking, you start with an end product in mind, and reason your way backward to the raw wood.

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.

Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reasonThe law, which is perfection of reason.

Science tells us what we have reason to believe. Not what we have a duty to believe. Not what experts, in their pontificating wisdom, instruct us to believe... No, science tells us what there is good reason to believe.

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

It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance.

Illness is something out of balance, rather than something within balance. It's been something that is created and it's been created for a purpose and a reason, and that purpose or reason may not be obvious to the person that has the disease. Nevertheless, there is something going on and it's not always easy to find that out.

The level of trust is extraordinarily low and the level of suspicion extraordinarily high, and with good reason and on both sides. The press has hunkered down for very good reason, because it's being treated like a mushroom.

The explanations for the things we do in life are many and complex. Supposedly mature adults should live by logic, listen to their reason. Think things out before they act. But maybe they never heard what Dr. London told me one, Freud said that for the little things in life we should react according to our reason. But for really big decisions, we should heed what our unconscious tells us.

Let our reason, and not our senses, be the rule of our conduct; for reason will teach us to think wisely, to speak prudently, and to behave worthily.

There is a reason the Democrats have had only two Presidents since 1968 and have managed to lose control of both houses of Congress in recent years. There is a reason they keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And it's not fraud and it's not dirty politics and it's not stupid voters. It's the plain and simple fact that the majority of those who vote don't like them.

It is no secret that any talented player must in his soul be an artist, and what could be dearer to his heart and soul than the victory of the subtle forces of reason over crude material strength! Probably everyone has his own reason for liking the King`s Gambit, but my love for it can be seen in precisely those terms.

God does not expect us to submit our faith to him without reason, but the very limits of our reason make faith a necessity.

That's the only reason I'm here. I don't need to play the game for any other reason than to win a championship.

The reason I gained so much weight in the first place and the reason I had such a sorry history of abusive relationships with men was I just needed approval so much. I needed everyone to like me, because I didn't like myself much.

Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.

We cannot safely assume that other people's minds work on the same principles as our own. All too often, others with whom we come in contact do not reason as we reason, or do not value the things we value, or are not interested in what interests us.

But I didn't walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn't come here to walk. I came to run. That's the reason-the only reason-I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn't about to walk. That was the rule.

Humans fear reason, but they ought to fear stupidity- for reason can be hard, but stupidity can be fatal.