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REASOn quotes
Man is a creature of impulse, emotion, action rather than reason. Reason is a verylate development in the world of living creatures, most of whom, as far as we know, get along admirably in daily life without it.
The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.
No doctrine can be a proper object of our faith which it is not more reasonable to receive than to reject.
"Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why," may be a good enough motto for men who are on their way to be shot. But from such men expect no empires to be built, no inventions made, no great discoveries brought to light.
We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.
The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.
If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.
Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen.
We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.
Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding, by experience; the most ignorant, by necessity; and beasts by nature.
God, who has given the Bible, has also given us our reason with which to examine and understand it; and we are guilty before Him if we bury this talent in the earth and hide our Lord's money.
He is next to the gods whom reason and not passion impels.
It has been my object and unquenched desire, to kindle young minds, and to guard them against the temptations of scomers, by showing that the scheme of Christianity, though not discoverable by human reason, is yet in accordance with it; that link follows link by necessary consequence; that religion passes out of the ken of reason only where the eye of reason has reached its own horizon; and that faith is then but its continuation; even as the day softens away into the sweet twilight, and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals into the darkness.
There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.
The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head, than the most superficial declamation; a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; and he that dares not reason is a slave.
How can finite grasp infinity?
The province of reason in matters of religion is the same as that of the eye in reference to the external world: not to create objects; nor to sit in judgment on the propriety of their existence, but simply to discern them just as they are.
There is not so much difference in men's ideas of elementary truth, as is generally thought. A greater difference lies in their power of reasoning from these truths.
To reason correctly from a false principle, is the perfection of sophistry.
Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason.
There are those who never reason on what they should do, but on what they have done; as if reason had her eyes behind, and could only see backward.
Sound and sufficient reason falls, after all, to the share of but few men, and those few men exert their influence in silence.
Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few.
If we are entirely reasonable, we must live like brutes whose instincts are the result of experience well reasoned out.
Reason is the director of man's will, discovering in action what is good, for the laws of well-doing are the dictates of right reason.
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
Your giving a reason for it will not make it right.—You may have a reason why two and two should make five, but they will still make but four.
Reason is like the sun, of which the light is constant, uniform, and lasting; fancy, a meteor of bright, but transitory luster, irregular in its motion, and delusive in its direction.
He that takes away reason to make way for revelation puts out the light of both, and does much the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope.
Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other.
Here is the manliness of manhood that a man has a good reason for what he does, and has a will in doing it.
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
To despise the animal basis of life, to seek value only at the level of conscious intelligence and rational effort, is ultimately to lose one's sense of cosmic relationships.
Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.
The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not, than in those who know it.
The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.
It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.
The way to subject all things to thyself is to subject thyself to reason. Thou shalt govern many if reason govern thee.—Wouldst thou be the monarch of a little world?—command thyself.
Faith evermore looks upward and descries objects remote; but reason can discover things only near, and sees nothing that is above her.
Never reason from what you do not know. If you do, you will soon believe what is utterly against reason.
He is not a reasonable man who by chance stumbles upon reason, but he who derives it from knowledge, from discernment, and from taste.
When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason.
Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity.
In me past, present, future meet—to hold long chiding conference. My lusts usurp the present tense—and strangle reason in his seat.
When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.
Wouldst thou subject all things to thyself?—Subject thyself to thy reason.
If reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.
I have no other but a woman's reason; I think him so, because I think him so.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in us unused.
Revelation is a telescope kindly given us, through which reason should look up to the heavens.
Good reasons must, of force, give place to better.
Strong reasons make strong actions.
We think so because other people all think so; or because—or because—after all, we do think so; or because we were told so, and think we must think so; or because we once thought so, and think we still think so; or because, having thought so, we think we will think so.
Revelation may not need the help of reason, but man does, even when in possession of revelation. Reason is the candle in the man's hand which enables him to see what revelation is.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
He that speaketh against his own reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain that no man serves God with a good conscience who serves him against his reason.
Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or than a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.
"Things of reason" or aids to thought, may be described as devices in the human mind for apprehending reality, but not as it really is in itself.
Reason is progressive; instinct is complete; swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.
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