Reason Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Albert Einstein

Galileo Galilei

Immanuel Kant

Rudyard Kipling

John Locke

Blaise Pascal

Elie Wiesel

We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.

Truth scarce ever yet carried it by Vote any where at its first appearance: New Opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other Reason, but because they are not already common.

It was our fault, and our very great fault—and now we must turn it to use.
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.

Rudyard Kipling

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

Galileo Galilei

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity. … Don't stop to marvel.

Albert Einstein

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions:
1. What can I know?
2. What ought I to do?
3. What may I hope?

It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.

Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

George Santayana

So, dear friend, put fear out of your heart. This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold — by voice, by posted card, by letter or by press. Reason never has failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.

William Allen White

We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.

Alain de Botton

The belief of our Reason is an Exercise of Faith, and Faith is an Act of Reason.

Joseph Glanvill

The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason.

I lived altogether in nine different places while in hiding, because whenever something happened, either someone betrayed the place or something happened to someone who knew where I was, I had to move. The rule of the game was never assume that anybody, however honorable, would be able to stand up under torture. If Mr. X, who knew where I was, was caught for some reason, I should move.

Why should conservationists have a positive interest in... farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.

There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.

Men do not have to cook their food; they do so for symbolic reasons to show they are men and not beasts.

Only this incident inseparable every custom must have, viz., that it be consonant to reason; for how long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law.

The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself.

Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.