Reason Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.

Joseph Stiglitz

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

Alexander Hamilton

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

A rise in wages, from an alteration in the value of money, produces a general effect on price, and for that reason it produces no real effect whatever on profits.

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

Joseph Glanvill

The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism—Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860—it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason.

John Singer Sargent

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?

China has The Bomb. [...] Sometime in the future—25, 50, 75 years hence—what will the situation be like then? By that time the Chinese will have the capability of delivery too. That's the reason some schools of thinking don't rule out a destruction of the Chinese military potential before the situation grows worse than it is today. It's bad enough now.

The power of the people and the power of reason are one.

Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

John Harington (writer)

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.'

Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.

Reinhold Niebuhr

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

James Russell Lowell

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.

While control is needed, and perfectly warranted, our bias should be clear up front: Monopolies are not justified by theory; they should be permitted only when justified by facts. If there is no solid basis for extending a certain monopoly protection, then we should not extend that protection. This does not mean that every copyright must prove its value initially. That would be a far too cumbersome system of control. But it does mean that every system or category of copyright or patent should prove its worth. Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good — for society, and not just for monopoly holders.

Lawrence Lessig

With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.

William Lloyd Garrison

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

George Santayana

It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.

One important reason to stay calm is that calm parents hear more. Low-key, accepting parents are the ones whose children keep talking.

He came by a leap to the goal of purpose, not by the toilsome steps of reason. On the instant his headlong spirit declared his purpose: this was the one being for him in all the world: at this altar he would light a lamp of devotion, and keep it burning forever.

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

My darling girl, Unfortunately this earth is not a fairy-land, but a struggle for life, perfectly natural and therefore extremely harsh. All the same, or precisely for this reason, it is happiness and comfort for us men to have a precious sweetheart - and I have the most precious, the dearest and best of all!

People may wonder why I am content to prescribe such a general and apparently vague formula as "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better" for all and every ailment. The reason is, strange as it may seem, that our subconscious mind does not need the details. The general suggestion that everything "in every way" is going well is quite sufficient to set up the procedure of persuasion which will carry its effects to the different organs and improve every function. I have had remarkable demonstration of this in the course of my long teaching and experiments. Time and again I have seen patients cured, not only of the particular disease for which they sought relief, but also of minor disabilities which they had almost forgotten.

Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.

José Ortega y Gasset

I know one husband and wife who, whatever the official reasons given to the court for the break up of their marriage, were really divorced because the husband believed that nobody ought to read while he was talking and the wife that nobody ought to talk while she was reading.