quotations about reason
Reason's a thing we dimly see in sleep.
REBECCA WEST
The Birds Fall Down
There are strange flowers of reason to match each error of the senses. Admirable gardens of absurd beliefs, forebodings, obsessions and frenzies. Unknown, ever-changing gods take shape there.
LOUIS ARAGON
Paris Peasant
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
There is a revelation of God to man in the light of reason.
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
Prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is pre-judgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason.
RUSSELL KIRK
The Conservative Mind
Reasons are not like garments, the worse for wearing.
ROBERT DEVEREUX
to Lord Willoughby, January 4, 1598
For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
On the Laws
To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.
REX STOUT
Royal Decree Revisited
Those who invalidate reason, ought seriously to consider, whether they argue against reason, with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle, that they are laboring to dethrone; but if they argue without reason, (which, in order to be consistent with themselves, they must do,) they are out of the reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Reason is a religious duty and quality of the mind; and exercise of the judgment upon all occasions and subjects is true and most divine worship.
CORA HATCH
"The Religion of Life", Discourses on Religion, Morals, Philosophy and Metaphysics
Nothing does Reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it. For truth often suffers more by the Heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Beasts act by sense, man should by reason; else he is a greater beast than ever God made: And the proverb is verified, the corruption of the best things is the worst and most offensive.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Whenever he was required to use his reason he felt like someone who had always used his right hand but was now required to do something with his left.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook B", The Waste Books
The total loss of reason is less deplorable than the total deprivation of it.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
Essays and Selected Verse
There are so many kinds of madness, so many ways in which the human brain may go wrong; and so often it happens that what we call madness is both reasonable and just. It is so. Yes. A little reason is good for us, a little more makes wise men of some of us--but when our reason over-grows us and we reach too far, something breaks and we go insane.
JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
"The Case of Beauvais", Back to God's Country and Other Stories
Reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
HONORE DE BALZAC
A Woman of Thirty
There is nothing without reason.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Studies in Physics and the Nature of the Body
Pure Reason left to herself
relieth on axioms and essential premises
which she can neither question nor resolve.
ROBERT BRIDGES
The Testament of Beauty
When God is contriving misfortunes for man, He first deprives him of his reason.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.
LOUIS BRANDEIS
dissenting opinion, New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 1932