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Reason Quotes

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Reason Quotes

“Carnal reason is an enemy to faith: it is ever crossing and contradicting it. It will never be well with thee, Christian, so long as thou art swayed by carnal reason, and you rely more upon thy five senses, than upon the four Evangelists. As the body lives by breathing, so the soul lives by believing.”

BelieveWellsLongArtSoulReasonBodyChristianEnemyFiveFourSensesTheeBreathingRelyLive ByCrossingsContradictingEvangelistsFive SensesSoul Life
Author:Thomas Brooks
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“Solitary confinement has been used extensively, it always has. I was in prison for 44 years; it was a normal part of life - the practice of it. They put you in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons, they put you in solitary confinement to protect you from violence or whatever, and they also put you in solitary confinement just to show you who has got the power ... It's not something new; it's just something that nobody really cared about in the past.”

YearsHas BeensReasonShowsPastUsedPracticeViolenceProtectNormalPrisonSomething NewSolitaryParts Of LifeProtect YouConfinementSolitary Confinement
Author:Wilbert Rideau
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“Corn is the hero of its own story, and though we humans played a crucial supporting role in its rise to world domination, it would be wrong to suggest we have been calling the shots, or acting always in our own best interests. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that corn has succeeded in domesticating us.”

WorldBelieveHumansHas BeensReasonStoriesWould BeInterestActingRolesHeroCallingShotsPlantCrucialDominationCornWorld DominationSupporting RolesCalling The Shots
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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“Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature's ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast mono-cultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature's complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain.”

WayDoeEndsReasonProblemCultureAnimalTechnologyGrowingConflictDiversityEatingPlantEnvironmentalVariousChainsComplexityGreat MenEfficiencyFeedingCropsIngenuityFood ChainProdigiousEnvironmental ProblemsMono
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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“I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. There is in every living creature an obscure but powerful impulse to active functioning. Life demands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful and dangerous to the healthy organism- in fact, it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really idle.”

LifeReasonFactsSuccessPowerfulImpossibleDyingDangerousGoes OnHealthyActivityDemandCreaturesPainfulActiveImpulseEggsIdleOrganismsSuccess In LifeObscureInactionLiving CreaturesHensRecuperation
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“The fact is that there is a profound spiritual hunger in the western world which, for a variety of reasons, its church is no longer able to assuage. So a book which suggests that there is a spiritual significance to the Christian story but that this has been suppressed by the church undoubtedly appeals to those who are anxious to square this circle.”

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Author:Melanie Phillips
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“Women are exciting for this one reason - it is the secret of women's allure - women enjoy submission, being bound. This I bring out in the Paradise Island sequences where the girls beg for chains and enjoy wearing them. Because all of this is a universal truth, a fundamental subconscious feeling of normal humans, the children love it. That is why they like Wonder Woman on Paradise Island better than anywhere else.”

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Author:William Moulton Marston
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“And yet there are many times when it does not make any difference what pattern one uses. One thing is certain. The more bedraggled the fly gets the better the trout like it. I think there is a reason for this. I think the bedraggled half worn out wet fly more closely imitates a nymph than a new one does. Most commercial flies are tied too bushy and full. A little trimming of wings and thinning out of hackles will often work wonders.”

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Author:Ray Bergman
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“Among the many inconsistencies which folly produces or infirmity suffers in the human mind, there has often been observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an author and his writings... Those whom the appearance of virtue or the evidence of genius has tempted to a nearer knowledge of the writer, in whose performances they may be found, have indeed had frequent reason to repent their curiosity.”

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Book:Selected poetry and prose
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“It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear.”

MenWritingMayStatesReasonDifficultDesignEasierAffectionAppetiteSchemesEnteringAbstractionSpeculationProposeRefinedEnticementDisengagementSolicitation
Book:The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
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“The reason territorial monarchs failed time after time against maritime powers was not that absolutist, non-consensual governments were incapable of building great fleets in peace - quite the reverse - but that they were unable to fund them in the crises of war. Mainly this was because they were forced to divert resources from the fleet to their armies, to fight territorial rivals frequently financed by their maritime enemy from the profits of sea trade.”

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Author:Peter Padfield
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“Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is a case of bad men doing wrong things for wicked reasons. This is the full-sized or standard purebred evil and is easily recognized even by moral neophytes. Other malignities-drugs in America, famine in Africa and everything in the Middle East-are more complex. When combating those evils people sometimes have trouble deciding whom to shoot.”

PeopleMenSometimesReasonAmericaEvilMoralHistoryCasesTroubleMiddleHumourDrugStandardsComplexesIraqEastWickedMiddle EastInvasionWrong ThingsFamineBad ManKuwait
Book:Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer
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“The seriousness or otherwise of the subject matter is often irrelevent to the question of whether a book is any good. F Scott Fitzgerald wrote a great and beautiful novel which mainly involved shallow people going to parties in a rich guy's house. By contrast, all sorts of terrible books are published every month about men slaughtering people for no reason - a serious matter which, in itself, does not make the author worthy of serious consideration.”

PeopleMenDoeBookMatterReasonBeautifulGuyHouseLanguagePartyNovelRichSubjectsSeriousMonthsInvolvedTerribleWorthyConsiderationNo ReasonContrastShallowSeriousnessSubject MatterScott Fitzgerald
Author:Declan Lynch
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“To escape the power of the unknown, to prove to yourself that you don't believe in it, you accept its spells. Like an avowed atheist who sees the Devil at night, you reason: He certainly doesn't exist; this is therefore an illusion, perhaps a result of indigestion. But the Devil is sure that he exists, and believes in his upside-down theology. What, then, will frighten him? You make the sign of the cross, and he vanishes in a puff of brimstone.”

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Book:Foucault's Pendulum
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“It is a testament to the fundamental honesty of football that Israel, with nothing to play for, overcame Russia in Tel Aviv on Saturday. The sport has its faults, but this basic trust is the reason Wembley holds 80,000 and could take more and the track and field venue for the London Olympics will be reduced after the event to the same capacity as the home of Wigan Athletic.”

ReasonPlayHomeSportsEventsHonestyFieldsFootballCapacityFundamentalsFaultsTrackIsraelLondonRussiaManagersSoccerOlympicsTestamentSaturdayAthleticChairmanVenuesTrack And FieldLondon OlympicsWigan
Author:Martin Samuel
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“Along with supernature and science, there is one other major source of horror movies disorder: the human psyche, most commonly homicidal psychosis. Unlike 'mad' scientists, horror-movies madmen are not visionary obsessives, glorifying in scientific reason as they single-mindedly purse their researches. They are, rather, victims of overpowering impulses that well up from within; monsters brought forth by the sleep of reason, not by its attractions.”

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Author:Andrew Tudor
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“The claim is also sometimes made that science is as arbitrary or irrational as all other claims to knowledge, or that reason itself is an illusion. As Ethan Allen said Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are labouring to dethrone. If they argue without reason, which they must do, in order to be consistent with themselves, they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“Behold our refutation of the error. It is not based on documents of faith, but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves. If then anyone there be who, boastfully taking pride in his supposed wisdom, wishes to challenge what we have written, let him not do it in some corner nor before children who are powerless to decide on such difficult matters. Let him reply openly if he dare. He shall find me there confronting him, and not only my negligible self, but many another whose study is truth.”

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Author:Thomas Aquinas
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“And what has come to prevail in democracies is the very reverse of beneficial, in those, that is, which are regarded as the most democratically run. The reason for this lies in the failure properly to define liberty. For there are two marks by which democracy is thought to be defined: "sovereignty of the majority" and "liberty." "Just" is equated with what is equal, and the decision of the majority as to what is equal is regarded as sovereign; and liberty is seen in terms of doing what one wants.”

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Author:Aristotle
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“With reason, then, the common opinion of mankind, little affected by the few dissentients who have contended for the opposite view, has found in the careful study of nature, and in the laws of nature, the foundations of the division of property, and the practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquility of human existence.”

HumansLittlesReasonWisdomAgeLawFoundPoliticsViewsCommonExistenceOpinionPrinciplesPracticeEconomyStudyMankindHuman NatureOppositesFoundationPropertyCarefulLiberalismAffectedDivisionConformityOwnershipTranquilityLaws Of NatureHuman ExistencePeace And Tranquility
Author:Pope Leo XIII
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