R Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with R. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Reason is an outcome of frailty and resentment. When Will fails to cope with the labour of life, or the life of labour, its fragile remnants are set to construct a slighter world of justifications.”
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
…'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”
“Reason is as necessary as reality.”
“Reason is but choosing.”
“Reason is evolutionary, in that abstract reason builds on and makes use of forms of perceptual and motor inference present in "lower" animals. The result is a Darwinism of reason, a rational Darwinism: Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature. The discovery that reason is evolutionary utterly changes our relation to other animals and changes our conception of human beings as uniquely rational. Reason is thus not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather, it places us on a continuum with them.”
Source: Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
“Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received.”
Source: The World as Will and Representation
“Reason is flawless, de jure, but reasoners are not, de facto.”
Source: Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics
“Reason is for people who still have something to fear.”
Source: True Biz
“Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are right
To warn me against losing mine. I cannot say—
I hope that I shall never want to say!— that you
Have reasoned badly. Yet there are other men
Who can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful.
You are not in a position to know everything
That people say or do, or what they feel:
Your temper terrifies them—everyone
Will tell you only what you like to hear.”
Source: The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
“Reason is God's crowning gift to man.”
Source: The Antigone of Sophocles: An English Version by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald
“Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions. Reason is as guilty as passion.”
“Reason is good but reality is greater.”
“Reason is good but revelation is greater.”
“Reason is immortal, all else mortal.”
“Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.”
Source: The Ascent to Truth
“Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.”
“Reason is indeed all about identity, or, rather, tautology. Mathematics is the eternal, necessary system of rational, analytic tautology. Tautology is not “empty”, as it is so often characterized by philosophers. It is in fact the fullest thing there, the analytic ground of existence, and the basis of everything. Mathematical tautology has infinite masks to wear, hence delivers infinite variety. Mathematical tautology provides Leibniz’s world that is “simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena.” No hypothesis cold be simpler than the one revolving around tautologies concerning “nothing.” There is something – existence – because nothing is tautologous, and “something” is how that tautology is expressed. If we write x = 0, where x is any expression that has zero as its net result, then we have a world of infinite possibilities where something (“x”) equals nothing (0).”
Source: God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics
“Reason is independent of all external authority, is outwardly autonomous; it is not, however, inwardly independent in relation to the whole life of the philosopher engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. It will not allow itself to be stripped of its feelings and volition, of its loves and hates, of its criteria of value. It discovers its ontological foundation in the depths of its own Being, in the intimacy of its own existence; it adapts itself to the philosopher’s belief or scepticism; it varies with his belief as the consciousness expands or contracts. But revelation transforms it.”
Source: العزلة والمجتمع
“Reason is inherently expansionist. It seeks universal application.”
Source: The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology
“Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.”
“Reason is intuition's servant.”
“Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”
“Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists principally in her mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and re-act on each other in accordance with their own nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the process, carries out reason's intentions.”
“Reason is Life's sole arbiter, themagic Laby'rinth's single clue.”
Source: The Kasîdah (couplets) of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî: A Lay of the Higher Law
“Reason is like an officer when the king appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.”
“Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought”
Source: Reason and Anti-reason in Our Time
“Reason is "man's imitation of divinity.”
Source: The Story of Philosophy
“Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.”
Source: Sane Society Ils 252
“Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.”
“Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die. It’s the end. If the watch doesn’t work properly, it must be fixed here and now by us.”
Source: Life of Pi
“Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties: revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God. . . .”
“Reason is necessary. It is necessary to deal with the world.”
“Reason is neutral. It has no biases. It has no agendas. There are no personal interests at stake. Reason simply says, “Here is the data, be responsible with it.” As such, reason is impartial.”
Source: Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
“Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own.”
Source: The Luminaries
“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.”
“Reason is not always reasonable”
Source: The Great Pearl of Wisdom
“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.”
Source: Atlas Shrugged
“Reason is not completely conscious, but mostly unconscious.
Reason is not purely literal, but largely metaphorical and imaginative.
Reason is not dispassionate, but emotionally engaged.”
Source: Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
“Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experience. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment. The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reason. Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural binding. In summary, reason is not, in any way, a transcendent feature of the universe or of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shaped crucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of the neural structure of our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning in the world.”
Source: Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
“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.”
“Reason is not meant to be worshipped, but understood only.”
“Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.”
Source: The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments
“Reason is not one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox. To advocate that reason be discarded in some circumstances is to advocate that thinking be discarded - which leaves one in the position of attempting to do a job after throwing away the required instrument.”
Source: Atheism: The Case Against God
“Reason is not some external power which dictates how we should behave, but an internal power, integral to who we are ... Reason does not command that we love anyone. Nonetheless, reason is vital in determining whom we love and why we love them.”
Source: Personal Relationships: Love, Identity, and Morality
“Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.”
Source: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics
“Reason is not "universal" in the transcendent sense; that is, it is not part of the structure of the universe. It is universal, however, in that it is a capacity shared universally by all human beings. What allows it to be shared are the commonalities that exist in the way our minds are embodied.”
Source: Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
“Reason is not what decides love.”
“Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love”
Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
“Reason is nothing without imagination.”
“Reason is often a more powerful persuader than gold.”