REASON QUOTES IV
quotations about reason
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Island
In the work of government, reason is the architect; it is the part of reason to command, and the duty of weakness and of passion to obey.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Faith sees from God to God. Reason eyes Divine Truth as an infant an egg.
JOHN PULSFORD
Quiet Hours
Disputes are not to be decided by the weight of authority, but by the force of reason.
GEORGE BERKELEY
The Works of George Berkeley
To give reason for fancy were to weigh the fire, and measure the wind.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.
JEREMY COLLIER
Pearls of Great Price
O reason, reason, abstract phantom of the waking state, I had already expelled you from my dreams, now I have reached a point where those dreams are about to become fused with apparent realities: now there is only room here for myself.
LOUIS ARAGON
Paris Peasant
Nothing can give peace to him who is at enmity with his own reason.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Reason is the Divine Governor of Man's life; it is the very Voice of God.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
To arm ourselves with thinking, and to keep reason upon the guard, will render the mind too hard for a blow.
JEREMY COLLIER
Pearls of Great Price
To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable.
EPICTETUS
Discourses
Reason, it is true, is DICTATOR in the Society of Mankind; from her there ought to lie no Appeal; But here we want a Pope in our Philosophy, to be the infallible Judge of what is or is not Reason.
DANIEL DEFOE
An Essay upon Publick Credit
In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Wicked men shake off the government of Reason, as if it were tyranny and usurpation.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
JONATHAN SWIFT
The Works of the Reverend Dr. Jonathan Swift: Miscellanies in prose
Whosoever persuadeth by reasoning from principles written, maketh him to whom he speaketh judge, both of the meaning of those principles and also of the force of his inferences upon them.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
In all demonstrative sciences the rules are certain and infallible; but when we apply them, our fallible said uncertain faculties are very apt to depart from them, and fall into error. We must, therefore, in every reasoning form a new judgment, as a check or controul on our first judgment or belief; and must enlarge our view to comprehend a kind of history of all the instances, wherein our understanding has deceived us, compared with those, wherein its testimony was just and true. Our reason must be considered as a kind of cause, of which truth is the natural effect; but such-a-one as by the irruption of other causes, and by the inconstancy of our mental powers, may frequently be prevented. By this means all knowledge degenerates into probability; and this probability is greater or less, according to our experience of the veracity or deceitfulness of our understanding, and according to the simplicity or intricacy of the question.
DAVID HUME
"Of Scepticism with Regard to Reason", A Treatise of Human Nature
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
A Midsummer Night's Dream