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Reason Quotes

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Reason Quotes

“The unknown ... became for our primitive forefathers a terrible and omnipotent source of boons and calamities visited upon mankind for cryptic and wholly extra-terrestrial reasons, and thus clearly belonging to spheres of existence whereof we know nothing and wherein we have no part.”

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Book:The Classic Horror Stories
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“When I say that I can write nothing but weird fiction, I am not trying to exalt that medium but am merely confessing my own weakness. The reason I can't write other kinds is not that I don't value & respect them, but merely that my slender set of endowments does not enable me to extract a compellingly acute personal sense of interest & drama from the natural phenomena of life.”

WritingTryingKindDoeI CanReasonValuesInterestNaturalMy OwnFictionDramaWeaknessMediumsEndowmentSlenderConfessingNatural Phenomena
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.”

WayGivingHas BeensReasonSeemsAgeSchoolArtistCultureInfluenceCenturyEvolutionPeriodsDemandMadPropertyTendenciesCuriousLoudLogicalDividedAbandonedPopeRhymeNoveltyAccuracyPolishedFactionsSensationalBardsGiving WayGeorgians
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“No one really knew the sciences except the Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, by reason of his length of life and experience, as well as of his studiousness and zeal. He knew mathematics and perspective, and there was nothing which he was unable to know; and at the same time he was sufficiently acquainted with languages to be able to understand the saints and the philosophers and the wise men of antiquity but his knowledge of languages was not such as to enable him to effect translations until the latter portion of his life.”

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Author:Roger Bacon
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“Religion, in its most general view, is such a Sense of God in the soul, and such a conviction of our obligations to him, and of our dependence upon him, as shall engage us to make it our great care to conduct ourselves in a manner which we have reason to believe will be pleasing to him.”

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Book:The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul: Illustrated in a Course of Serious and Practical Addresses
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“Happy (if mortals can be) is the man,Who, not by priest but Reason, rules his span:Reason, to its possessor a sure guide,Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.”

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Book:The Poetical Works with Notices of His Life, History of the Rowley Controversy, a Selection of His Letters and Notes Critical and Explanatory: I-II
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“The first reason for psychology's failure to understand what people are and how they act, is that clinicians and psychiatrists, who are generally the theoreticians on these matters, have essentially made up myths without any evidence to support them; the second reason for psychology's failure is that personality theory has looked for inner traits when it should have been looking for social context.”

PeopleShouldFirstsHas BeensMadeMatterReasonSocialSupportPsychologyTheoryPersonalityEvidenceShould HaveMythTraitsShould Have BeenPsychiatristClinicians
Author:Naomi Weisstein
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“We need to make sure that the laws we're passing are protecting people. And we should not be voting against something that makes progress just because it doesn't make as much progress as we'd like to see made. As much as I might like to see any number of issues progress in larger steps, I understand that some of these things happen in smaller steps. And so for that reason, progress is progress. And success is success.”

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Author:Clay Aiken
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“I love stories where the impossible appears believable, plausible and real. Maybe it's silly, but it's one of the reasons Michael Crichton's writing always appealed to me: he took outlandish ideas and made them seem completely within the realm of possibility. I remember reading "Jurassic Park" and feeling like: "Oh, yeah - no, that's totally happening right now. They're bringing back dinosaurs!"”

WritingMadeIdeasRealReasonStoriesFeelingsSeemsRememberReadingImpossiblePossibilityRight NowHappeningsYeahSillyLove StoryRealmsParksDinosaursPlausibleBelievableOutlandishJurassic ParkRealm Of Possibility
Author:J. J. Abrams
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“I want to be the apostle of self destruction. I want my book to affect man's reason, his emotions, his nerves, his whole animal nature. I should like my book to make people turn pale with horror as they read it, to affect them like a drug, like a terrifying dream, to drive them mad, to make them curse and hate me but still to read me.”

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Author:Leonid Andreyev
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“I am interested in the creativity of the criminal attitude because I recognize in it the existence of a special condition of crazy creativity. A creativity without morals fired only by the energy of freedom and the rejection of all codes and laws. For freedom rejects the dictated roles of the law and of the imposed order and for this reason is isolated.”

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Author:Joseph Beuys
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“It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional plea, the inverse of the usual argument. The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions for these are our issues, not nature's.”

PeopleNeedsWritingHumansWellsHardReasonChallengesMoralIssuesArgumentLet MeStupidityPracticalsEthicalUsualConventionalUnfairEcologyExtinctionFloatsBiologistUnconventionalSnailHumanisticInversePrimacyHuman StupidityEthical Questions
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.”

HumansReasonProblemFormMy OwnLandSubjectsApproachResearchWestSpeciesIndianRejectsDividesHomo SapiensVariablesClassificationSnailDifferentiation
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.”

TryingDoeReasonUseHandsUniverseBeliefReligiousAtheismPositionEvidenceBuiltUltimatePhilosophicalRemainsStructureBelieverNeverthelessLackingPersuasionRespectableAgnosticismReligious BeliefDogmaticTrue BelieverHeathenUltimate TruthUnyieldingDemolish
Book:Pieces of Eight Pa
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“One of the things particularly admirable in the public utterances of President Lincoln is a certain tone of familiar dignity, which, while it is perhaps the most difficult attainment of mere style, is also no doubtful indication of personal character. There must be something essentially noble in an elective ruler who can descend to the level of confidential ease without forfeiting respect, something very manly in one who can break through the etiquette of his conventional rank and trust himself to the reason and intelligence of those who have elected him.”

ReasonCharacterCertainDifficultPresidentLevelsBreakStyleDignityMereNobleFamiliarEaseToneRulersConventionalEtiquetteAttainmentAdmirableIndicationDoubtfulManlyBreak ThroughUtteranceConfidentialPersonal CharacterPresident Lincoln
Book:Abraham Lincoln
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“Truly the souls of men are full of dread: Ye cannot reason almost with a man That looks not heavily and full of fear.”

MenLooksSoulReasonFearDread
Book:The Works of William Shakespeare: The first, second, and third parts of King Henry VI. The first part of the contention, &c. The true tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the good King Henry the Sixt. King Richard III
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“To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.”

WantFeelsMeanReasonOpportunityGrowsFreedomConditionsRespectConscienceProhibitionFree Thought
Book:Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
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“One hope no sooner dies in us but another rises up in its stead. We are apt to fancy that we shall be happy and satisfied if we possess ourselves of such and such particular enjoyments; but either by reason of their emptiness, or the natural inquietude of the mind, we have no sooner gained one point, but we extend our hopes to another. We still find new inviting scenes and landscapes lying behind those which at a distance terminated our view.”

IfsMindStillsReasonLyingDiesHopeNaturalViewsBehindsParticularSceneDistanceSatisfiedLandscapeEnjoymentFancyEmptinessInviting
Book:The Works: In Six Volumes
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“Courage that grows from constitution very often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it, and when it is only a kind of instinct in the Soul breaks out on all occasions without judgment or discretion. That courage which proceeds from the sense of our duty, and from the fear of offending Him that made us, acts always in a uniform manner, and according to the dictates of right reason.”

MenKindMadeSoulReasonGrowsBreakDutyJudgmentConstitutionInstinctOccasionsUniformsDiscretionBreak OutForsakeOffendingAll Occasions
Book:The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq
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“The reason why a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him. It is his work itself that, by fertilising the rare minds capable of understanding it, will make them increase and multiply.”

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Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed. There is no reason why, existing outside ourselves, a real place should conform to the pictures in our memory rather than those in our dreams.”

ShouldRealReasonDreamRealityImaginationMemoriesDestroyedReason WhyNo ReasonConformOur DreamsArbitraryOur MemoriesElusiveSelected
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong -- only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again.”

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Author:Plato
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“In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.”

ThinkingWayHumansReasonLawCertainIndividualHuman BeingsAnimalOpinionTheoryAmountPressureBehaveUrgesConformityBehaviourPublic OpinionCompulsionPractiseEccentricityArbiterGregarious
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“He who wholly renounces himself, and relies not on mere human reason, will make good progress in the Scriptures; but the world comprehends them not, from ignorance of that mortification which is the gift of God's word.”

WorldHumansReasonProgressIgnoranceMereScriptureRelyGift From GodRenounceMortificationHuman Reason
Book:The table talk or familiar discourse of Martin Luther, tr. by W. Hazlitt
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“In a word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel, to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity, far otherwise than mere human reason can; and while evil oppresses us, it teaches how these virtues throw light upon the darkness, and how, after this poor, miserable existence of ours on earth, there is another and an eternal life.”

FeelsHumansBookReasonLightEarthEvilPoorExistenceTeachDarknessVirtueHolyComfortEternalHighestMereCharityScriptureTrialsMiserableAfflictionEternal LifeHoly ScripturesHuman ReasonFaith HopeFaith Hope And Charity
Book:The Table Talk Or Familiar Discourse of Martin Luther
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