SCHOLAR ISLAND
Reason
"My point is that reason, with its compulsion to set limits, tends to block
out the truth."
Arthur M. Young
"Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer than a toss-up."
Charles Sanders Pierce
"The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches. Nor is reason itself the most satisfactory instrument for the understanding of life."
Aldous Huxley
"If we would be guided by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold."
Louis Brandeis
"The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason."
Mrya Mannes
"Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people."
-Don Corleone, in Mario Puzo's The Godfather
"God hath not created anything better than Reason, or anything more perfect, or more beautiful than Reason: the benefits which God giveth are on its account; and understanding is by it, and God's wrath is caused by disregard of it."
Muhammed (Sayings of Muhammed 372)
"If religions divide men, reason brings them closer.....There is only one single reason. The unity of the human spirit is the great, consoling result that comes from the peaceful clash of ideas, when one puts aside the opposing claims of the so-called supernatural revelations. The covenant of the good minds of the whole Earth against fanaticism and superstition is on the surface the act of an imperceptible minority; at bottom, it is the only covenant that lasts."
-Ernest Renan
" The hatred of reason which is common in our time is very largely due to the fact that the operations of reason are not conceived in a sufficiently fundamental way."
Bertrand Russell
The Conquest of Happiness
"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has she is the Devils greatest whore, a whore eaten by scab and leprosy, who ought to be trodden underfoot and destroyed, she and her wisdom .Throw dung in her face .drown her in baptism."
Martin Luther
"Faith, must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God"
-Martin Luther
"...reason is the devil's bride, ratio , the whore, comes in and thinks she is clever. Stay at home with your ugly devil's bride....It is more possible to teach an ass to read than to blind reason and lead it right; for reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed."
-Martin Luther (Works Vol. 12)
"Reason is Unity .All arts lie in man, though not all are apparent. The awakening brings them out. To be taught is nothing; everything is in man, waiting to be awakened."
Paracelsus
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
-Jonathan Swift
"Mankind misses its opportunities, and its failure are a fair target for ironic criticism. But the fact that reason too often fails does not give fair ground for the hysterical conclusion that it never succeeds. Reason can be compared to the force of gravitation, the weakest of all natural forces, but in the end the creator of suns and of stellar systems; those great societies of the Universe."
Alfred North Whitehead
"By reason only can we attain to a correct knowledge of the world and a solution of its greatest problems."
Ernst Heinrich Haeckel
"Rationalism is no bulwark. If we view reason and feeling as enemies, instead of as a team without whose equal pull nothing can be done, if we discard James, Bergson, and Freud as "anti-intellectualists" and pray for the return of Huxleyan robustness, we are indeed lost "
Jacq ues Barzun
"Contrary to popular opinion, human beings are not rational; they rationalize, which is quite different."
Gerald Massadie
History of the Devil
"If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason."
Samuel Butler
"Reason means truth and those who are not governed by it take the chance that someday the sunken fact will rip the bottom out of their boat."
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"But what is reason worth, after all?"
Fosco Maraini
"Not only within contemporary Euro American culture but even within humanist groups there are calls for alternatives to reason."
Robert B. Tapp
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Book: "Rational Man: A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics" by Henry Veatch
Book: "Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West" by John Ralston Saul
Book: "Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge To Western Thought" by George Lakoff
Book: "The God of Faith and Reason" by Robert Sokolowski
Book: "The Voice of Reason: Fundamentals of Critical Thinking" by Burton F. Porter
Book: "The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason" by Charles Freeman
Book: "The Nature Of Rationality" by Robert Nozick
Book: "Farewell to Reason" by Paul Feyerbend
Book: "The Voice Of Reason: Fundamentals of Critical Thinking" by Burton F. Porter