Quotes on Reason

There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.

If I could say with words what my dances express, I wouldn’t have a reason to dance.

A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey which catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the highroad to his reason.

There is reason to believe that voluntary activity, more than highly developed intellect, distinguishes humans from the animals which stand closest to them.

I suppose this is the reason why diaries are so rarely kept nowadays- that nothing ever happens to anybody.

There is no end to the creativity, ingenuity, and tenacity of those who look for reasons to criticize. They cannot seem to release their grip on grudges. They gossip and find fault with others. They nurse wounds for decades, taking every opportunity to tear down and demean others. This is not pleasing to the Lord, 'for where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work' (James 3:16).

There are really good reasons to leave the workforce or work less or take a different job when you want to be with your children. I just want women - and men - to make that choice once they have the child. Not years in advance, because... they don't get the right opportunities. They give up before they even start.

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?

You don't do art for any other reason than to help your soul grow.

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or color, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.

For whatever reason, God has blessed me with the ability, put me in a position to make these leaps and bounds. I'm fulfilling my part of the bargain, which is to give back and be a positive influence on others.

I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down.

Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.

Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.

We have reason not to be afraid of the machine, for there is always constructive change, the enemy of machines, making them change to fit new conditions.

It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.

We are biological creatures. We are born, we live, we die. There is no transcendent purpose to existence. At best we are creatures of reason, and by using reason we can cure ourselves of emotional excess. Purged of both hope and fear, we find courage in the face of helplessness, insignificance and uncertainty.

Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians.

We look back, already, with astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism, on the reason and rights of man; we look forward with joy, to the period, when it shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound forever in the chains, with which it had loaded its miserable victims.

Freemasonry is an institution founded on eternal reason and truth; whose deep basis is the civilization of mankind, and whose everlasting glory it is to have the immovable support of those two mighty pillars, science and morality.