I am never upset for the reason I think.
Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic.
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.
A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.
Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.
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.
There are strange flowers of reason to match each error of the senses.
Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.
Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.
As if reasoning were any kind of writing or talking which tends to convince people that some doctrine or measure is true and right.
Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice.
Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.
We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.
To reason about love is to lose reason.
Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.
As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.
People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.
The more you reason the less you create.
If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
Reason should direct and appetite obey.
Let reason govern desire.
Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.
The person who is master of their passions is reason's slave.
The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.
It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.
No one ever excused his way to success.
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; and he that dares not reason is a slave.
Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.
Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason.
Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.
Reason can in general do more than blind force.
Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies reason.
I'll not listen to reason. Reason always means what someone else has got to say.
Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.
Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.
Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.
As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.
To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational.
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.
Reason gains all people by compelling none.
Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.
Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.
Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.
It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.
Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
A man always has two reasons for doing anything -- a good reason and the real reason.
There is really nothing more to say except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.
He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.
Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.
What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.
— Ovid
Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons for it afterwards.
Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information -- never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good -- he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world.
— Plato
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.
Reason lies between the bridle and the spur.
Reason is the wise man's guide, example the fool's.
Everyone has his reasons.
I got fame and fortune, and I lost my sense of reasoning.
Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.
Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
Reason is like an officer when the king appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; Go is the sun.
Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one.
The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape.
A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.
Sure, he, that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason, to fast in us unused.
Strong reasons make strong actions.
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.
The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.
Our passion and principals are constantly in a frenzy, but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
Too much sensibility creates unhappiness and too much insensibility creates crime.
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 over passion.
Man always has two reasons for the things he does; the logical one and the real one.
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.
— Voltaire
The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
— Voltaire
Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth.
Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.
An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.
Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
Reason is emotion for the sexless.
The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.