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Reason

  • Reason is the most active human faculty.

  • It is in the nature of foolish reasonings to seem good to the foolish reasoner.

  • I no longer idolize reason. I have come to accept that ninety percent of what we do is irrational and that we spend what little rational thought we have in justifying our irrationality.

  • It is so much easier to be enthusiastic than to reason!

  • Reason to the lovesick was fire to the feverish. It sent them clean out of their minds.

  • ... I love to see folks use reason if they have got any ...

  • There are times when to be reasonable is to be cowardly.

  • Reason is a poor hand at prophecies.

  • A rational process is a moral process.

  • ... you want to know what I like and dislike. I will answer you by paraphrasing Howard Roark in The Fountainhead: 'Don't ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think.'

    • Ayn Rand,
    • 1963, in Michael Berliner, ed., Letters of Ayn Rand ()
  • The clearsighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.

  • The will to be totally rational / is the will to be made out of glass and steel: / and to use others as if they were glass and steel.

    • Marge Piercy,
    • "Song of the Fucked Duck" (1969), in Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood Is Powerful ()
  • Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought.

    • Simone Weil,
    • "The Power of Words," The Simone Weil Reader ()
  • 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.

  • I'll not listen to reason ... Reason always means what some one else has got to say.

  • Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.

  • Reason cannot remain a bare intellectual faculty; it must become a faculty of judgment dealing with the question of values.

  • When someone behaves unreasonably ... paradoxically there's always a reason.

  • The world is not a rational place.

  • One longs for a voice in the middle, and the mail often brings such balanced and refreshing views. In fact, the overwhelming majority of those who write me belong to this sensible persuasion — able to see a little right and a little wrong on both sides of many questions.

  • ... by taking notice of those feelings and images that seemed to be in my blood and bones rather than in my head, I had found myself able to behave, not less reasonably, but more so. Apparently it was as much a false extreme to try and live by reason alone, leaving the passions out of count, as to ignore reason and put passion in its place as the guiding force of life.

  • Logic is a wonderful invention. It is so wonderful, people often mistake it for reason. Reason, however, requires sense. Logic requires only consistency.

  • Intuition is not opposed to reason, but works with it in a complementary fashion. Typically, flashes of intuitive insight follow the exhaustive use of logic and reason.

  • Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

  • Evidence and reason: my heroes and my guides.