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Reason Quotes

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Reason Quotes

“Law is no explanation of anything; law is simply a generalization, a category of facts. Law is neither a cause, nor a reason, nor a power, nor a coercive force. It is nothing but a general formula, a statistical table.”

ReasonFactsLawForceCausesTablesExplanationCategoriesFormulasGeneralization
Book:Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale: Selections and Commentaries
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“Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life.”

ThinkingMenLongReasonForceActingStruggleFunctionContraryPreservesFeaturesAppropriateDescriptionExtinctionAdverse
Book:Human action: a treatise on economics
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“It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend.”

ShouldHumansMayImportantReasonIndividualForceDifficultGrowthPrinciplesDependsCivilizationProveEssentialsTasksLimitationBowsPreservationHuman Reason
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“You become funny for a reason. I became an actor because that's who I was, nothing else - it was the only thing I was good at. You become a clown and you make people laugh because a) it protects you from everything, and b) it's this validating force in your life. And when you're 12 and 13 years old, you need validation and you're lost and you're kind of floating and you suffer from a severe learning disability and you're overweight and you have glasses... you become funny for a reason.”

PeopleNeedsYearsKindReasonSufferingActorsLostForceLaughingProtectGlassesDisabilitySevereFloatingClownMaking People LaughValidationOverweightProtect YouOld YouLearning Disability
Author:Matthew Lillard
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“In general the languages of most unpolished people have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.”

PeopleReasonEnergyLanguageForceNaturalExpressionOrdinaryPassionateCriticalAdmireAffectedObserversForce And Energy
Book:A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
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“This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that--a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotized, and do not notice--or if we notice, belittle--equally strong forces on the other side, the forces, in short, of reason, sanity and civilization.”

IfsThinkingHumansLooksHardReasonSeemsStrongForceSidesHuman BeingsAliveCivilizationCreaturesStupidityChecksRationalSanityFrighteningBrutalityDescentBarbarismBelittle
Book:Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
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“The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated over woman by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities both of body and mind. But the balance is already shifting—force is losing its weight and mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual qualities of love and service, in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy. Hence the new age will be an age less masculine, and more permeated with the feminine ideals—or, to speak more exactly, will be an age in which the masculine and feminine elements of civilization will be more evenly balanced.”

MenWorldMindHas BeensReasonBodyAgePastSpiritualSpeakStrongForceQualityBalanceCivilizationElementsLosingIdealsWeightIntuitionFeminineAggressiveBalancedNew AgeMasculineShiftingMind And BodyAlertnessMasculine And FeminineAscendancy
Author:Abdu'l-Bahá
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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.”

ThinkingDoeReasonSeemsFallForceSocialNumbersStruggleImagineImpossibleFindingsRelationCirclesReason WhyContractsPerpetualFall BackSocial ContractAbsolutismPerpetual Motion
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.”

IfsShouldArtReasonPhilosophyFormSpiritForceKnownExerciseMereGenuineWorks Of ArtTotalityKindredRaphael
Author:Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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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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“There never was a law yet made, I conceive, that hit the taste exactly of every man, or every part of the community; of course, if this be a reason for opposition, no law can be executed at all without force, and every man or set of men will in that case cut and carve for themselves; the consequences of which must be deprecated by all classes of men, who are friends to order, and to the peace and happiness of the country.”

IfsMenMadeCountryReasonLawOrderCoursesForceCommunityClassCasesCuttingTasteConsequenceEvery ManOppositionPeace And Happiness
Book:The Writings of George Washington: pt. IV. Letters official and private, from the beginning of his presidency to the end of his life: (v. 10) May, 1789-November, 1794. (v. 11) November, 1794-December, 1799
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“Reason ... contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order for "rational" is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.”

MenReasonCharacterActionOrderForceIgnoranceDestructionRationalOppressionIrrationalBehalfBrutalityThoughts And Actions
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“Vitality springs from diversity -- which makes for real progress so long as there is mutual toleration, based on the recognition that worse may come from an attempt to suppress differences than from acceptance of them. For this reason, the kind of peace that makes progress possible is best assured by the mutual checks created by a balance of forces-alike in the sphere of internal politics and of international relations.”

KindMayLongRealReasonPoliticsForcePeaceDifferencesJusticePowerProgressAcceptanceBalanceDiversitySpringRelationIndependenceInternationalToleranceChecksRecognitionInternalsMutualSpheresIndividualismAssuredVitalityInternational RelationsToleration
Book:Why Don't We Learn from History?
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“The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.”

FirstsReasonLastsBeliefForceCreativeInstinctInsightIntuitionAnalysisRealmsOppositionAgreementLogicalConfirmationIllusoryInstinct Intuition
Book:Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays
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“One reason for the primacy of the market in shaping the modern world is that it forces a reorganization of society in order to make the market work properly . When a market comes into existence, as Marx fully appreciated, it becomes a potent force driving social change.”

WorldReasonOrderForceSocialExistenceModernDrivingSocial ChangeAppreciatedModern WorldPrimacyReorganization
Book:The Political Economy of International Relations
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“However much the creationist leaders might hammer away at their scientific and philosophical points, they would be helpless and a laughing-stock if that were all they had. It is religion that recruits their squadrons. Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for - of even against - evolution, march in the army of the night, their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.”

IfsKnowsReasonMightWould BeNightStrongForceLeaderMillionsLaughingEvolutionArgumentArmyPhilosophicalMereMarchFrighteningHelplessHammersRecruitImperviousCreationist
Author:Isaac Asimov
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“Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.”

ThinkingReasonForceImaginationExistenceHabitReflectionEternityLaysMereRootedNothingness
Book:Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects
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“There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.”

MindBelieveMeanDoeReasonInspirationFaithThreeForceChristianitySonAuthorityInstitutionsProofContraryRationalFormerLatterCustoms
Author:Blaise Pascal
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“Why do so many ingenious theorists give fresh reasons every year for the decline of letter writing, and why do they assume, in derision of suffering humanity, that it has declined? They lament the lack of leisure, the lack of sentiment ... They talk of telegrams, and telephones, and postal cards, as if any discovery of science, any device of civilization, could eradicate from the human heart that passion for self-expression which is the impelling force of letters.”

IfsGivingWritingYearsHumansHeartSelfReasonSufferingHumanityPassionForceExpressionCivilizationDiscoveryLettersAssumingCardsDevicesSentimentsLeisureDeclineHuman HeartTelephonesSelf ExpressionIngeniousLamentTheoristsDerisionLetter WritingTelegrams
Author:Agnes Repplier
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