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Reason Quotes

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Reason Quotes

“Sometimes events that lead us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance--a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late--and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that knowledge, we are ever able to recover. When we again find our way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in our suffering, that I think is when God smiles upon us, proud of the strength of his creation.”

ThinkingWayRealSometimesReasonLightHappensAbleSufferingTurnsLeftGriefCarEventsCreationProudLateTestsTrainDeeperDespiteToo LateNo ReasonInabilityHumannessBereftHappenstanceDeeper MeaningHumanness Is
Author:Neil Abramson
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“At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.”

IfsMenWellsStillsReasonHateCausesKnownSkyEatingAreasDecidedCome UpPracticalsPrincipalWell KnownEmperorEarthquakesJerusalemOutlawMonotheismLeviticusShellfishJustinian
Author:Gore Vidal
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“Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us today. The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.”

PeopleKnowsWellsLongReasonEarthChristianPowerfulChristianityBloodTeachingConditionsTrainingGunSlaveClubsProtectionPoisonRebellionRulersLong AgoDiscontentUndoneAdaptedConfrontingInstillChristian Teaching
Author:Emma Goldman
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“Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back; And is a swelling, and the last affection A high mind can put off; being both a rebel Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, and offereth violence to nature's self.”

MindLooksSoulSelfReasonLastsLawViolenceAmbitionConscienceAffectionRebelSwelling
Book:The Works of Ben Jonson...: With Notes Critical and Explanatory, and a Biographical Memoir
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“I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz . that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.”

ShouldReasonFoundCausesImaginationMinutesShould HaveMathematicsDesertParadiseConsiderationLengthScrutinyDrearyAdmirerQuintessence
Book:The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria
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“The imagination ... that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors.”

GivingSelfReasonEnergyImaginationBirthSensesSymbolsHarmoniousPermanenceConductorFluxIncorporating
Book:Biographia Literaria, Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions
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“Hamlet 's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.”

IfsThinkingWantShouldMayDoeReasonPlayCharacterSeemsLastsOpportunityNaturalEffectsObjectsHabitSkillsMereAccidentsPracticalsCuriousIncidentsSmack
Book:The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
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“The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and watery depths, all these have vanished; They live no longer in the faith of reason.”

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Book:The Maid of Oreleans; The Bride of Messina; Wilhelm Tell; Demetrius; The Piccolomini; The Death of Wallenstein; Wallenstein's Camp
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“Cheap music, childish images, the vulgate in language, in its crassest sense, can penetrate to the deeps of our necessities and dreams. It can assert irrevocable tenure there. The opening bars, the hammer-beat accelerando of Edith Piaf's Je ne regrette rien - the text is infantile, the tune stentorian, and the politics which enlisted the song unattractive - tempt every nerve in me, touch the bone with a cold burn and draw me into God knows what infidelities to reason, each time I hear the song, and hear it, uncalled for, recurrent inside me.”

KnowsReasonDreamSongLanguageColdBeatsDrawsBonesBarsOpeningTunesNervesInfidelityHammersGod KnowsPenetrateUnattractiveTenureIrrevocableInfantileEnlisted
Book:Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?
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“For reasons that are both fair and foul - but mostly for fair reasons - we have come under the domain of a scientific-management system whose ambitions are endless. They want to manage every second of our lives, every expenditure that we make. And the schools are the training ground to create a population that's easy to manage.”

WantReasonSchoolEasyOur LivesAmbitionTrainingFairsManagementPopulationEndlessManageDomainFoulEvery SecondExpendituresManagement Systems
Author:John Taylor Gatto
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“I was born and raised in the University of Chicago area and had an uneventful middle-class Catholic childhood. I had a heavy Catholic upbringing and Catholicism is terrible - it's the reason there were slaves. Mass every morning at seven o'clock during Lent. It's a totally negative, man-made religion.”

MenMadeReasonBornClassMorningChildhoodMiddleTerribleMassAreasNegativeCatholicSlaveRaisedSevenUniversityHeavyClockMiddle ClassCatholicismChicagoEvery MorningUpbringingBorn And Raised
Author:Chaka Khan
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“After the occupation of Paris, Hitler visited Paris, which of course was a great jewel for him, and he wanted to go up on the Eiffel Tower and gaze down upon the city of Paris, which he'd conquered. For some reason the elevators mysteriously stopped working that day. Some people say it might have had to do with the French resistance. So he couldn't go up.”

PeopleReasonMightWantedCoursesCitiesResistanceParisOccupationTowersJewelsElevatorsEiffel TowerEiffel
Author:Joe Harris
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“It's actually quite common for presidents to believe that future generations will render a verdict on their presidencies that is more lasting or definitive than the judgments of their contemporaries. The reason is that although history is certainly "an argument without end" - we're still debating many age-old questions - time does help settle others.”

BelieveDoeStillsEndsReasonHelpingAgePresidentCommonGenerationsJudgmentArgumentSettlingLastingPresidencyFuture GenerationVerdict
Author:David Greenberg
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“The problem here is that a civilization that is 1,000 light years away doesn't know we exist. They don't know that we have radio telescopes here on Earth because they see Earth as it was 1,000 years ago. Nothing can travel faster than light, so however good their instruments they can't see in affect the future. So there is no particular reason they should be sending us messages at this time.”

KnowsShouldYearsReasonProblemLightEarthParticularCivilizationMessagesYears AgoInstrumentsRadioFasterTelescopesLight Years
Author:Paul Davies
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“Supposing we knew that up there is some alien civilization and it's sending radio signals our way we should not tell the public where that is. We could say that we've picked up a signal, but we should not tell them where for the simple reason that anybody could commandeer a radio telescope, set themselves up as some self appointed spokesperson of mankind and start beaming all sorts of crazy messages back to the aliens.”

WayShouldSelfReasonSimpleCrazyMankindCivilizationMessagesRadioAliensSignalsTelescopesSupposing
Author:Paul Davies
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“As soon as I find myself in the presence of a rich man, I cannot help looking upon him as an exceptional and beautiful being, as a sort of marvellous divinity, and, in spite of myself, surmounting my will and my reason, I feel rising, from the depths of my being, toward this rich man, who is very often an imbecile, and sometimes a murderer, something like an incense of admiration. Is it not stupid? And why? Why?”

MenFeelsSometimesReasonHelpingBeautifulWealthRichStupidDepthRisingSpiteDivinityAdmirationMurdererExceptionalRich ManMarvellousNot StupidImbecilesIncense
Author:Octave Mirbeau
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“What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason — instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.”

PeopleTryingReasonGuyTragedyInstitutionsNotionSelfishAssGreekNo ReasonLightningHittingIndifferentDoomedBoltsAchillesOlympianPostmodernGreek TragedyWhippingHurlingOedipusLightning BoltsOlympian Gods
Author:David Simon
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“What do prisoners do? Write, of course; even if they have to use blood as ink, as the Marquis de Sade did. The reasons they write, the exquisitely frustrating restrictions of their autonomy and the fact that no one listens to their cries, are all the reasons that mentally ill people, and even many normal people write. We write to escape our prisons.”

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Author:Alice Weaver Flaherty
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