Reason Quotes

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."

Jane Austen

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

Christopher Hitchens

"I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience."

Charlotte Brontë

"Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason."

Andrew Solomon

"I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!"

J.K. Rowling

"Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason."

Khaled Hosseini

"Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."

George Carlin

"I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them."

Bertrand Russell

"It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot."

Sarah Dessen

"Cassia.I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it’s like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not going gentle.I love you. (Ky Markham)"

Ally Condie

"The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five."

Carl Sagan

"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you."

Anton Chekhov

"You might be looking for reasons but there are no reasons."

Nina LaCour

"There’s no reason to not be humble, because as great as you may be, you can always be greater."

Jarod Kintz

"At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you."

Criss Jami

"Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment."

Immanuel Kant

"Relax. Just be. And be just."

Jarod Kintz

"Find a purpose to serve, not a lifestyle to live."

Criss Jami

"The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one."

Emil Cioran

"Theology is ignorance with wings."

Sam Harris

"At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right"

Miguel de Unamuno

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason."

Immanuel Kant

"Faith and Reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which is soars to the truth."

Pope John Paul II

"Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."

Martin Luther

"We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge."

Christopher Hitchens

"In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."

David Hume

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."

Delos McKown

"Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name."

Sam Harris

"We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man."

Sam Harris

"If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason."

Blaise Pascal

"Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking."

Martin Heidegger

"There's no need to curse God if you're an ugly duckling. He chooses those strong enough to endure it so that they can guide others who've felt the same."

Criss Jami

"It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition."

Bertrand Russell

"If I lie about truth which you will know somehow later, then you would call me a liar. But If you're willing to dig further about truth that force me do it, then you would understand my reason. But you wouldn't acknowledge it."

Toba Beta

"Were we incapable of empathy – of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their suffering is like our own – then ethical reasoning would lead nowhere. If emotion without reason is blind, then reason without emotion is impotent."

Peter Singer

"Whenever we want to combat our enemies, first and foremost we must start by understanding them rather than exaggerating their motives."

Criss Jami

"By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox."

Galileo Galilei

"Maybe I’m strange and perverse, but I’ve always thought there was something sexy about a compelling argument."

Therese Doucet

"Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required."

Jane Austen

"Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap."

Yann Martel

"In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived."

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Every worldview has to bring together reason and faith."

Ravi Zacharias

"I writeNotFor the sake of gloryNot For the sake of fameNotFor the sake of successBut for the sake of my soul"

Beth Nimmo

"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade..."

Ayn Rand

"Faithfulness imparts God's reason for all circumstances. No matter what the world says, losing is no longer an option."

Criss Jami

"Religion doesn't just cloud our minds. It asks us to deliberately deceive ourselves-- to replace reason with its opposite, faith. And when men operate on faith, they can no longer be reasoned with, which makes them more dangerous than any sane man, good or evil."

James L. Sutter

"I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains."

Robert G. Ingersoll

"But maybe that isn't possible. Maybe the mind of the majority is always the healthy mind, simply by virtue of its numbers. Maybe it's the definition of madness to believe I'm right and everyone else if wrong, to find my thoughts rational and reasonable when almost the entire world finds them damaged and flawed."

Stacey Jay

"The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand it sounds just, but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations."

Criss Jami

"To ask, 'How do you do it?' is already starting off on the wrong foot. When reaching for the stars, there does not have to be a 'how' if there is a big enough 'why'."

Criss Jami

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Reason Quotes | QOTD