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Reason Quotes

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Reason Quotes

“Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called 'Why We Fight' that explored America's reasons for entering the war. Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far less clear, I think it's crucial to ask the questions: 'Why are we doing what we are doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us?'”

ThinkingWorldMadeWarReasonTodayAmericaFilmFightingAsksClearSeriesIraqWar Of The WorldsEngagedCrucialWorld War IiElsewhereFrankWorld War ITroopsEnteringOur Troops
Author:Eugene Jarecki
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“The only people who are afraid of file sharing are the people whose albums are so dull presentation-wise that nobody cares about owning the actual finished product, and the people who have so little connection to their listeners that said listeners have no reason to care whether the artists they like are getting reimbursed for their efforts.”

PeopleLittlesSaidReasonCareArtistEffortWiseProductsConnectionsAlbumsFinishedDullNo ReasonListenersFilesPresentationNobody CaresFile Sharing
Author:John Darnielle
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“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

GivingBookReasonWould BeTruthWantedReadingFearSeaInformationNo ReasonReading BooksDrowningReducingConcealedBansEgoismPassivityDeprivingHuxleyIrrelevanceBrave New World TechnologyBrave New World Consumerism
Author:Neil Postman
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“When a rainbow appears vividly in the sky, you can see its beautiful colors, yet you could not wear as clothing or put it on as an ornament. It arises through the conjunction of various factors, but there is nothing about it that can be grasped. Likewise, thoughts that arise in the mind have no tangible existence or intrinsic solidity. There is no logical reason why thoughts, which have no substance, should have so much power over you, nor is there any reason why you should become their slave.”

ShouldMindReasonBeautifulExistenceSkyColorShould HaveSlaveVariousAriseFactorsSubstanceReason WhyLogicalOver YouClothingsRainbowTangibleOrnamentsConjunctionsSolidityBeautiful Colors
Author:Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
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“For loving, working, and creative people to throw off the yoke of power it is necessary to abolish power itself, not merely to make the yoke comfortable. Where some have power, others do not, and the two classes persist. A free society is where all have power-power over and responsibility for their own lives, power and reason to respect the lives of others. This is also a society without classes, a society of human beings, not rulers and the ruled.”

PeopleHumansTwoReasonHuman BeingsResponsibilityClassCreativeComfortableRulersPersistCreative PeopleFree SocietyAbolishLives Of OthersYoke
Book:Dear America
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“One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America is that the policy of our Government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them.”

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Author:James Inhofe
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“Now, justification in this life is given to us according to these three things: first by the laver of regeneration by which all sins are forgiven; then, by a struggle with the faults from whose guilt we have been absolved; the third, when our prayer is heard, in which we say: 'Forgive us our debts,' because however bravely we fight against our faults, we are men; but the grace of God so aids as we fight in this corruptible body that there is reason for His hearing us as we ask forgiveness.”

MenFirstsHas BeensReasonBodyLife IsFightingThreeAsksGivenPrayerSinStruggleGraceHeardThirdsForgivingGuiltFaultsHearingDebtAidsThis LifeJustificationForgivenThree ThingsGrace Of GodOur PrayersRegenerationAsking For Forgiveness
Author:Saint Augustine
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“[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously-after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth.”

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Author:Robert A. Heinlein
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“To be united to God in unity of person was not fitting to human flesh, according to its natural endowments, since it was above his dignity; nevertheless, it was fitting that God, by reason of his infinite goodness, should unite it to himself for human salvation.”

ShouldHumansPersonsReasonNaturalUnitedGoodnessDignityInfiniteSalvationUnityFleshNeverthelessFittingEndowmentNot FittingNatural Endowment
Book:Summa Theologica, Volume 4 (Part III, First Section)
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“It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals and that we retain within our biological nature elements of these evolved responses. We have learned considerably more about this responses, and we are beginning to to understand how they interact with our capacity to reason.”

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Book:The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress
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“Philosophers are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.”

IfsHeartKindHas BeensMadeRealSelfReasonEnoughPhilosophyFactsProblemInspirationDesireOpinionHonestColdDevelopmentPureBottomPhilosopherNoiseAbstractAssumptionTouchedVirtuousSelf DevelopmentTruthfulnessHunchesDialecticsUnconcernedNot Honest
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he will acquire a good conscience and with it success among his fellow men.”

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Book:Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“Does it seem to you impossible to imagine anything more inextricable than the social contract, when you think of the frightful number of relations that it must regulate -- something like squaring the circle, or finding perpetual motion? That is the reason why, wearied of the struggle, you fall back on absolutism and force.”

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Book:General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century
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“Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason ; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, I mean a necessary dialectical tool.”

KnowsHumansHeartMeanReasonFeelingsTurnsForceSocialSilenceStudyMysteryRevolutionMy HeartToolsContradictionConsiderationHypothesisDogmaticDogmatismSocial RevolutionGreat Unknown
Book:System of Economical Contradictions: Or, The Philosophy of Misery
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“Every philosophy is complete in itself and, like a genuine work of art, contains the totality. Just as the works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, should not have appeared to them as mere preliminary exercises for their own work, but rather as a kindred force of the spirit, so, too reason cannot find in its own earlier forms mere useful preliminary exercises for itself.”

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Author:Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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“There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.”

KnowsFirstsTwoImportantReasonPhilosophyOpinionImpossibleMiddleIgnoranceTruth IsImportant ThingsThreatExtremesSensibleQuestsUnnecessaryMiddle GroundTwo ExtremesSocratic
Author:Allan Bloom
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“Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading.”

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Book:Complete writings: with variant readings
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“An intelligent couple can read their Darwin and know that the ultimate reason for their sexual urges is procreation. They know that the woman cannot conceive because she is on the pill. Yet they find that their sexual desire is in no way diminished by the knowledge. Sexual desire is sexual desire and its force, in an individual's psychology, is independent of the ultimate Darwinian pressure that drove it. It is a strong urge which exists independently of its ultimate rationale.”

KnowsWayReasonDesireIndividualStrongForcePsychologyCoupleUltimatePressureIntelligentIndependentUrgesPillsProcreationRationaleSexual Desire
Book:The God Delusion
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