Quotes about Rationality

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

At present the dominant story, collectively speaking, is scientific, and one aspect of the mind is given credit for advancing human evolution: rational thought. If we pity our forebears for their difficulty in getting past superstition and myth, the future may pity us for glorifying the rational mind and neglecting the whole mind.

Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.

If you cheat on reason with emotion you will go bankrupt.

But to be hanged—is that not unendurable? Even so, when a man feels that it is reasonable, he goes off and hangs himself.

Man, the rational animal, can put up with anything except what seems to him irrational; whatever is rational is tolerable.

Seeing that our birth involves the blending of these two things—the body, on the one hand, that we share with animals, and, on the other hand, rationality and intelligence, that we share with the gods—most of us incline to this former relationship, wretched and dead though it is, while only a few to the one that is divine and blessed.

For determining the rational and the irrational, we employ not only our estimates of the value of external things, but also the criterion of that which is in keeping with one's own character.

According to him the faculty of choice distinguishes humans from irrational animals. We can make considered choices among 'impressions' or 'appearances', meaning anything that comes within range of our senses, together with whatever thoughts and feelings these sensations evoke. While all animals are subject to impressions, those of humans differ by virtue of the fact that we possess the power of language and reason (both faculties expressed by the single word logos).

well as the others, namely, the faculty of reason. Reason is unique among the faculties assigned

I believe only in the mathematics.

When an atheist enjoys the cool breeze of a sunny autumn day as he writes his treatise saying God doesn't exist, the ultimate source of his pleasure remains God. God is the author of the universe itself—including the powers of rational thought the atheist misuses to argue against God. David