Best 3829 quotes in «reason quotes» category

One of the most obvious signs of intelligence is not knowledge alone but imagination combined with reason.

One of the recent arguments from design, that based on the so-called fine-tuning life of some fundamental physical constants, founders on the following objections: an extremely small prior probability merited by the God of theism in light – if that is the right word – of the Problem of Evil; the fact that it is not unreasonable to place a substantial probability on the hypothesis that a future theory will fix those values; and the sheer incoherence of computations of the ‘chances’ of fine-tuning were there no fine-tuner.

[On Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz] The answer is unknowable, but it may not be unreasonable to see him, at least in theological terms, as essentially a deist. He is a determinist: there are no miracles (the events so called being merely instances of infrequently occurring natural laws); Christ has no real role in the system; we live forever, and hence we carry on after our deaths, but then everything — every individual substance — carries on forever.

Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist.

(On the seeming futility of metaphysics) Why then has nature afflicted our reason with the restless striving for such a path, as if it were one of reason's most important occupations? Still more, how little cause have we to place trust in our reason if in one of the most important parts of our desire for knowledge it does not merely forsake us but even entices us with delusions and in the end betrays us! Or if the path has merely eluded us so far, what indications may we use that might lead us to hope that in renewed attempts we will be luckier than those who have gone before us?

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake ... We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and -- since there is no other metaphor -- also the soul.

Our common humanity can bridge any prior expanse of disagreement between us.

Our deepest (and fastest) yearnings can be tempered by reason and experience; our more prudent judgments softened by desire and need.

Our greater beastliness lies not in a penchant for brute force,but in our greater corruption, nihilism, and decadence; in our servitude to the overwhelming systems we create; in the sociopathic rationalism we adopt to master natural forces and to compete with the machines we build;and in the scientistic idolatry that co-opts the religious impulse. Of course the ancients resorted more to brute force: they lacked the infrastructure to punish their enemies and victims in a safer, more sophisticated fashion, with advanced legal regimes and mass-produced, maximum security prisons; with engineered propaganda for social conditioning; and with economic, cyber, and drone warfare. We channel our aggression with more sophisticated instruments, but the use of those instruments doesn’t ennoble us.

Our reasons are not prophets When oft our fancies are.

Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.

Ours was the age of enlightenment, he said, when the battle cry was, ‘We must know, we shall know!’, and reason would depose superstition and we be liberated by it.

Passion belongs to nothing and reason belong to many things that’s why reason it is better than passion.

People inspire people. That’s the more reason why mentor-ship is a critical tool for dreams accomplishment.

People falling in love for one reason may fall out of love due to another reason. However, if faith or trust is the basis of love, it does not break easily. Often people use all their reasoning to understand each other and even live together for years to satisfy themselves that they are in love. However, marriages based on such logical love, the love based on reason, do not last long. Quite to the contrary, marriages where the partners do not even know each other, survive for life—being based on mutual trust and faith.

People of great faith are almost always lacking in reason, while people possessed of great reason often suffer from a pitiful lack of faith. So it always happens that people of great faith can move the world but cannot steer it, while people possessed of great reason excel at steering the world but are hopeless at moving it

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. They did not give or ask for reasons. 'Reason,' Dr. Pritchett had told them, 'is the most naive of all superstitions.' 'The source of public opinion?' said Claude Slagenhop in a public radio speech. 'There is no source of public opinion. It is spontaneously general. It is a reflex of the collective instinct of the collective mind.

Perhaps not everything happens for a reason. That is, until you make it so; because for everything there is a season, which can, in fact, become beautiful.

People who praise a leader even when he is doing the wrong things are the main reasons why his fall is near.

People would be so much more at ease if they acted on impulse rather than reason. That’s why drugs are so effective in curing mental illness—because they impair our judgment. Don’t try to think too much.

Perhaps the nearest one could get to a common characteristic of poststructuralism would be a radical suspicion of reason, order and certainty as governing principles of knowledge and existence...the absurd and the irrational can no longer be distinguished from the real and the rational

Perhaps the only reason why you worry in life, tarry your goals and bury your joy is that you are still bearing the untold story of you untouched, which seems to bang on the doors of your heart every time! Go and open the way, and fulfill your destiny!

...[P]hilosophical theories are structured by conceptual metaphors that constrain which inferences can be drawn within that philosophical theory. The (typically unconscious) conceptual metaphors that are constitutive of a philosophical theory have the causal effect of constraining how you can reason within that philosophical framework.

Play with reason and doubt will close all the gates

Perhaps, if I use my reason in good faith, I may suceed in discovering some ray of probability to lighten me in the dark night of nature. And if this faint dawn which I seek does not come to me, I shall be consoled to think that my ignorance is invincible; that knowledge which is forbidden me is assuredly useless to me; and that the great Being will not punish me for having sought a knowledge of him and failed to obtain it.

Philosophy is an infertile hybrid. Life is a prolific hermaphrodite.

Philosophy cannot live by pure reason: it is only the translation into abstract and ideal form of a culture which has grown up by historical stages.

Popularity makes no sense If your fame is a shame.

Poor feeling hijacks thinking for self-deception: to hide harsh truths, avoid action, evade responsibility, and, as the existentialists might put it, flee from freedom. Thus, poor feeling is a kind of moral failing, indeed, the deepest kind, and virtue principally consists in correcting and refining our emotions and the values that they reflect. To feel the right thing is to do the right thing, without any particular need for conscious thought or effort.

Porque felizmente (pensaba) el hombre no está solo hecho de desesperación sino de fe y esperanza; no solo de muerte sino también de anhelo de vida; tampoco únicamente de soledad sino de momentos de comunión y amor. Porque si prevalece la desesperación, todos nos dejaríamos morir o nos mataríamos, y eso no es de ninguna manera lo que sucede. Lo que demostraba, a su juicio, la poca importancia de la razón, ya que no es razonable mantener esperanzas en este mundo en que vivimos. Nuestra razón, nuestra inteligencia, constantemente nos están probando que este mundo es atroz, motivo por el cual la razón es aniquiladora y conduce al escepticismo, al cinismo y finalmente a la aniquilación. Pero, por suerte, el hombre no es casi nunca un ser razonable, y por eso la esperanza renace una y otra vez en medio de las calamidades.

Positive thinking relates to an art of reasoning with the quality of hope for a better future either in the face of difficulties or in the presence of abundance of opportunities.

Put off the fire of pride and save your life from burning with flames of failure. Pride is the reason why many dreams only survive as ashes today. Learn the lesson; hung on to humility!

Purpose drives the process by which we become what we are capable of being.

Presenting a rational argument to a person who has forsaken the use of reason is like asking a vegetarian to eat a cheeseburger.

Probably I'm boring, but I have a reason about it and I'm doing behind this, so take it, like it's a fake face.

Purpose and reason? Purpose and reason are not the same thing. Reason seeks to understand. Purpose requires faith. Reason is attained. Purpose is revealed. Reason is acquired by works. Purpose is endowed with grace. And wisdom is the combination of both.

Question like a child, reason like an adult, and write like a sage.

Rail longer than train cars ; and the hope than our reasons. (Rail plus long que les wagons ; - Et l'espoir que nos raisons.)

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking—that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action—that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise—that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality—that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind—that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.

Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.

Reading doesn't mean accepting everything you read, it means reasoning everything you read.

Rational thought is trivial compared to affairs of the heart.

Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

Reason, according to Objectivism, is not merely a distinguishing attribute of man; it is his fundamental attribute-his basic means of survival. Therefore, whatever reason requires in order to function is a necessity of human life.

... reason and love keep little company together now-a-days...

Reasoning can take you wherever you want to go.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. …'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.

Reason is inherently expansionist. It seeks universal application.

Reason is the presupposition of faith, and faith is the fulfillment of reason.