Reason Quotes

The ways of Providence being inscrutable, and the justice of it not to be scanned by the shallow eye of humanity, nor to be counteracted by the utmost efforts of human power or wisdom, resignation, and as far as the strength of our reason and religion can carry us, a cheerful acquiescence to the Divine Will, is what we are to aim

The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.

Reason, too late perhaps, may convince you of the folly of misspending time.

Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

We have abundant reason to rejoice, that, in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened age, & in this land of equal liberty, it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining & holding the highest offices that are known in the United States.

While I give you these assurances, and pledge myself in the most unequivocal manner, to exert whatever ability I am possessed of, in your favor-let me entreat you, Gentlemen, on your part, not to take any measures, which, viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity, & sully the glory you have hitherto maintained-let me request you to rely on the plighted faith of your Country, and place a full confidence in the purity of the intentions of Congress.

Though you follow the trade of the warrior, you do so in the spirit of Washington - not of Genghis Khan. For Americans, only threat to our way of life justifies resort to conflict.

I thought so at first, but there is reason to believe that he [Adolf Hitler] is still alive. But that in itself does not constitute a problem.

The reason of this is that if you look at the movement of the wateryour eye will not be able to fix on anything, but its action is as that of things seen in your shadow when you are walking; for if the eyeat-tempt to distinguish the nature of the shadow, the wisps of strawor other things contained in it appear of rapid movement and it seems that these are much more swift to flee from the said shadow than the shadow is to proceed.

I obey Thee Lord, first for the love I ought, in all reason to bear Thee; secondly for that Thou canst shorten or prolong the lives of men.

The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies everything placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

You don't reason with intellectuals. You shoot them.

There is no place in a fanatic's head where reason can enter.

It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.

Well, then, had I been at Martinique, I should also have been on the side of the English, because above all things it is necessary to save one's life. I am for the whites, because I am white; I have no other reason, yet that is reason good enough. How was it possible to grant liberty to the Africans, to men without any kind of civilization, who did not even know what a colony meant, or that there was such a place as France?

A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.

I have come to join you today to add our own voice to the universal call for Palestinian self-determination and statehood. We would be beneath our own reason for existence as government and as a nation, if the resolution of the problems of the Middle East did not feature prominently on our agenda.