Quotessence
Home / Topics / Reason Quotes

Reason Quotes

Browse 18366 quotes about Reason.

Related topics

PeopleIfsThinkingMenReason WhyKnowsWorldNo ReasonWantWayBelieveShouldGivingHumansFeelsNeedsTryingWritingFirstsWellsMindKindMayDoeMeanHas BeensYearsDifferentMadePersonsFactsLooksHappensTwoRealSometimesImportantHeartI CanSaidIdeasChildrenLongSeemsLittlesEnoughBookMatterArtEndsUseStillsCountryMightDoneWarFeelingsPoliticalAbleWholeHardStatesWould BeProblemPlayWantedCertainSimpleLawGovernmentMomentsShowsStoriesSelfTodayActionHelpingGivenI BelieveBigsFilmPassionPurposeOrderSoulFormMovingHateAtheismAgeForceRunningBeliefCharacterCoursesKidsEarthLife IsTogetherCausesmore

Reason Quotes

“If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.”

IfsMenShouldMayDoeI CanReasonCharacterNumbersConsciousnessCreaturesAuthorityIncreaseAbsolutesFellowsMajorityRefuseObstaclesUnlimitedAdversariesPossessingLiableReproachMisuseAbsolute Power
Book:American Institutions and Their Influence
Create image

“In a free society with a government based on reason, it is inevitable that there will be no uniform opinion about important issues. Those accustomed to suppression and control by governmental authority see this as leading only to chaos. But a government of the people requires difference of opinion in order to discover truth and to take advantage of the opportunity that only understanding brings.”

PeopleImportantReasonGovernmentOrderOpportunityUnderstandingDifferencesOpinionIssuesAuthorityAdvantageChaosInevitableUniformsAccustomedFree SocietySuppressionImportant IssuesDifferences Of Opinion
Author:Thomas Jefferson
Create image

“The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.”

MenWritingMeanHas BeensReasonMightJesusLeftNationsRaceStepsMankindDangerousSonOfficeIsraelConvincedLocalsPriestsSuperstitionsFoundingChurch And StateAbrahamSeparation Of Church And StateOur Founding FathersFounding Fathers ChristianJacobUs Founding FathersReformersFounding Fathers ReligionFounding Fathers ReligiousReligion GodIsaacFounding Fathers Anti ReligionChristianity From Founding FathersChristian FatherRemorseless
Author:Thomas Jefferson
Create image

“Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.”

KnowsWorldWayDoeImportantReasonHandsGrowsSecretExistenceTreeIgnoranceRootsProfoundSeedsCirclesAbsurdExplanationPawsDeliriumSproutsExtremityNauseaRotation
Author:Jean-Paul Sartre
Create image

“Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that's despicable.”

WantRealReasonCharacterHousePresidentWhitePartyColorRacismSkinsLet MeChiefsRacistWhite HousePresident ObamaPortionsCompetenceCommandersDespicableCommander In ChiefCandid
Author:Colin Powell
Create image

“We have already discovered the fact that fear is the chief reason for poverty and failure and misery that takes on a thousand different forms. We have already discovered the fact that the man who masters fear may march on to successful achievement in practically any undertaking, despite all efforts to defeat him.”

MenMayDifferentReasonFactsFormEffortPovertySuccessfulHe ManMastersThousandAchievementMiseryDefeatDespiteChiefsMarchUndertakings
Book:The Law of Success
Create image

“Many of life's decisions are hard. What kind of career should you pursue? Does your ailing mother need to be put in a nursing home? You and your spouse already have two kids; should you have a third?such decisions are hard for a number of reasons. For one the stakes are high. There's also a great deal of uncertainty involved. Above all, decisions like these are rare, which means you don't get much practice making them. You've probably gotten good at buying groceries, since you do it so often, but buying your first house is another thing entirely.”

NeedsShouldFirstsKindMeanDoeTwoHardReasonHomeKidsMotherHouseDecisionDealsNumbersCareersPracticeInvolvedThirdsPursueUncertaintyBuyingStakesSpouseNursingGroceriesNursing Home
Author:Steven Levitt
Create image

“White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so much dirt to Black people - their guilty conscience tells them to be afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.”

PeopleThinkingReasonDoneFightingBlackWhiteArmsGunConsciencePoliceGuiltCeaseGuiltyLiberationBlack PeopleDirtOrganizeGuilty Conscience
Author:Assata Shakur
Create image

“Even the wisest of mankind cannot live by reason alone; pure arrogant reason, denying the claims of prejudice (which commonly are also the claims of conscience), leads to a wasteland of withered hopes and crying loneliness, empty of God and man: the wilderness in which Satan tempted Christ was not more dreadful than the arid expanse of intellectual vanity deprived of tradition and intuition, where modern man is tempted by his own pride.”

MenReasonChristModernMankindLonelinessCryPridePureIntellectualConscienceTraditionEmptyClaimsPrejudiceIntuitionVanitySatanWildernessLive ByArrogantTemptedDeprivedWisestModern ManWitheredExpanseWasteland
Book:The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
Create image

“Indeed, the very first acknowledgment (as far as I am aware) of the attraction of mutilated bodies occurs in a founding description of mental conflict. It is a passage in The Republic, Book IV, where Plato’s Socrates describes how our reason may be overwhelmed by an unworthy desire, which drives the self to become angry with a part of its nature.”

FirstsMayBookSelfReasonBodyDesireConflictAngryAttractionDescriptionRepublicPassagesPlatoFoundingOverwhelmedUnworthyAcknowledgmentPlato S
Book:Regarding the Pain of Others
Create image

“I figure there are enough self-opinionated assholes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is. You ask a lot of kids today what they want to be when they grow up, and they say, 'I want to be famous.' You ask them, 'For what reason?' and they don't know or care. I think Andy Warhol got it wrong - in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWantTryingLittlesEndsSelfReasonEnoughCareKidsTodayFacesAsksGrowsGrowing UpMinutesFrontsFiguresOne DayUglyOpinionatedWarhol
Author:Banksy
Create image

“I think Martin Luther correctly distinguished between what he called the magisterial and ministerial uses of reason. The magisterial use of reason occurs when reason stands over and above the gospel like a magistrate and judges it on the basis of argument and evidence. The ministerial use of reason occurs when reason submits to and serves the gospel…. Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter.”

ThinkingShouldReasonUseChristianSpiritBeliefJudgingHolyConflictEvidenceArgumentBasesFundamentalsAriseFormerWitnessHoly SpiritLatterSubmitLutherDistinguishedChristian FaithMagistratesPrecedence
Author:William Lane Craig
Create image

“I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.”

MatterReasonBodySpeakSimpleSpaceViewsPropertyRefuseFilling
Author:Nikola Tesla
Create image

“The Saudis and Emiratis blame all of this on Iran. I think they’d have to grant, that as has been said, that the Houthis are an internally generated movement in Yemen and the Saudis were supposed to be dealing with the Houthis, who started out in essence along their border. So one of the things that we’re seeing is a complete failure of Saudi policy toward Yemen over the past 10 years, but the Saudis totally believe that the reason the Houthis are able to succeed militarily is the amount of money, advice, and guns they are receiving from Iran.”

ThinkingYearsBelieveHas BeensSaidReasonAblePastSeeingAdvicePolicyMovementAmountSucceedGunEssenceBlameSupposed To BeBordersIranGrantsReceivingOver The PastSaudisYemen
Author:Elliott Abrams
Create image

“There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

ShouldReasonEnoughHumanityEvolutionProveEqualIntellectualCapacityUniversalFirmHeritageReservesAnticipateEqual Power
Book:Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science
Create image

“It is the political task of the social scientist — as of any liberal educator — continually to translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of individuals. It is his task to display in his work — and, as an educator, in his life as well — this kind of sociological imagination. And it is his purpose to cultivate such habits of mind among the men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is to secure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic society.”

MenMindHumansWellsKindEndsReasonPoliticalPurposeValuesIndividualSocialTermImaginationIssuesTroubleHe ManHabitMen And WomenTasksScientistDemocraticIndividualitySecureVarietyExposedDisplayTranslateEducatorDemocratic SocietySociologicalHabits Of Mind
Book:The Sociological Imagination
Create image

“The history of science shows that the progress of science has constantly been hampered by the tyrannical influence of certain conceptions that finally came to be considered as dogma. For this reason, it is proper to submit periodically to a very searching examination, principles that we have come to assume without any more discussion.”

ReasonShowsCertainPrinciplesProgressInfluenceAssumingDiscussionConceptionSubmitDogmaExaminationHistory Of Science
Author:Louis de Broglie
Create image

“I felt a funeral in my brain, and mourners to and fro kept treading, treading till I felt that sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, a service, like a drum, kept beating, beating, till I felt my mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a box and creak across my soul with those same boots of lead again, then space began to toll, as if the heavens were a bell and being were an ear, and I, and silence, some strange race wrecked, solitary, here. Just then, a plank in reason broke, and I fell down and down and hit a world at every plunge, and finished knowing then.”

IfsWorldMindSoulReasonHeavenFeltSpaceRaceBrainSilenceKnowingHeardStrangeEarsDown AndBoxesFinishedMy SoulBrokeLiftsFuneralBootsBellsSolitaryNumbPlungeTollsTreading
Author:Andrew Solomon
Create image

“No matter what difficulty you are facing, it is coming from Divine Light to bring you to a higher place within. Write down every conceivable reason that this situation can contribute towards your growth. Write down every way this experience can possibly set the stage for serving to uplift others. When you are complete, and have come to the other side of this experience, you will then know 'why' it happened.”

KnowsWayWritingMatterReasonLightSidesGrowthSituationHappenedStageDivineHigherDifficultyNo Matter WhatUpliftingServingDivine Light
Author:Barbara Rose
Create image