Quotes about Reason

The philosopher must argue for sense experience by appealing to sense experience. What choice does he have? If he appeals to something else as his final authority, he is simply being inconsistent. But this is the case with any basic commitment. When we are arguing on behalf of an absolute authority, then our final appeal must be to that authority and to no other. A proof of the primacy of reason must appeal to reason; a proof of the necessity of logic must appeal to logic;

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the environment. The unreasonable man adapts the environment to him. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ~ George Bernard Shaw

To people accustomed to reason about the forms in which their religious feeling has incorporated itself, it is difficult to enter into that simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the feeling have never been severed by an act of reflection.

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

Wonder is that possession of the mind that enchants the emotions while never surrendering reason. It is a grasp on reality that does not need constant high points in order to be maintained, nor is it made vulnerable by the low points of life's struggle.

Reason would lead us to the conclusion that Jehovah would not create a wonderful earth like this, permit man to bring it to a high state of cultivation in many places, and then completely destroy it.

According to the Law of Cause and Effect, every effect must have a cause. In other words, everything that happens has a catalyst; everything that came into being has something that caused it. Things don't just happen by themselves.

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with too much dejection

We disparage reason. But all the time it's what we're most concerned with. There's will as motor and there's will as brakes. Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.