Quotes about reason

A collection of quotes on the topic of wisdom, sense, making, use.

Best quotes about reason

Pablo Picasso photo

“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Ludwig Van Beethoven photo

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Musik höhere Offenbarung ist als alle Weisheit und Philosophie.
http://books.google.com/books?id=W2k6AAAAcAAJ&q=%22Musik+h%C3%B6here+Offenbarung+ist+als+alle+Weisheit+und+Philosophie%22&pg=PA193#v=onepage
As reported by Bettina von Arnim in a letter to Goethe, 28 May 1810.
Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde: Seinem Denkmal, Volume 2, Dümmler, 1835, p. 193.
Variant: Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Euripidés photo

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”

Bacchæ l. 480
Variant translation: To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish.
Variant translation: He were a fool, methinks, who would utter wisdom to a fool. (translated by Edward Philip Coleridge)
Variant translation: Wise words being brought to blinded eyes will seem as things of nought. ( translated by Gilbert Murray http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8418/8418-h/8418-h.htm)
Source: The Bacchae

E.E. Cummings photo
Ravi Zacharias photo
Jawaharlal Nehru photo

“That is more than morality; it's sense.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Interview by James Cameron in Picture Post (28 October 1950)
Context: If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense.

Jami photo

“Good intentions are useless in the absence of common-sense.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

An argosy of fables, p. 240
about himself, Extracted from Baharīstān-e- Jami

Frank Miller photo
John Lennon photo

“paranoia is just a heightened sense of awareness”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Quotes about reason

José Baroja photo
Yuzuru Hanyu photo

“I am not really into making a lot of comments for myself. More than anything, I am already feeling a lot of love from many supporters. So... in that sense, I don't think I need to do anything special.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Other quotes, 2018
Original: (ja) 特に自分からコメントを常に発信したいなとは思ってないし、何よりも、自分がたくさんの方々に愛してもらってるのはすごく分かってるので…うん…あのー、何だろう? 特別自分から何かをしなくてもいいかなという風に思っています。
Source: Hanyu about his absence from social media in an interview https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/video/detail/yuzuru-hanyu-happy-to-say-nothing-at-all/ at the Olympics 2018, published 27 February 2018 on the Olympic Channel. (Retrieved 18 September 2020)

Tupac Shakur photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organisation for their international world swindler, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.
It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one section is still playing the German, French-man, or Englishman, the other with open effrontery comes out as the Jewish race.”

1920s, Zweites Buch (1928)
Source: Mein Kampf
Context: Jewry is a Folk with a racial core that is not wholly unitary. Nevertheless, as a Folk, it has special intrinsic characteristics which separate it from all other Folks living on the globe. Jewry is not a religious community, but the religious bond between Jews; rather is in reality the momentary governmental system of the Jewish Folk. The Jew has never had a territorially bounded State of his own in the manner of Aryan States. Nevertheless, his religious community is a real State, since it guarantees the preservation, the increase and the future of the Jewish Folk. But this is solely the task of the State. That the Jewish State is subject to no territorial limitation, as is the case with Aryan States, is connected with the character of the Jewish Folk, which is lacking in the productive forces for the construction and preservation of its own territorial State.

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House, 1928, p. 25: Ch 2
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Context: We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they moved finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Sadhguru photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“The worker in a capitalist state—and that is his deepest misfortune—is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker. He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932).Translated as “Those Damned Nazis: Why a Workers Party?

“Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We a Workers’ Party?” https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932)
1930s

Viktor E. Frankl photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Viktor E. Frankl photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“The man who has no sense of history, is like a man who has no ears or eyes”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party
Amos Oz photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Carl R. Rogers photo
Richard Bach photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“I know myself, and I have such a sense of religion that I shall never do anything which I would not do before the whole world; but I am alarmed at the very thoughts of being in the society of people, during my journey, whose mode of thinking is so entirely different from mine (and from that of all good people). But of course they must do as they please. I have no heart to travel with them, nor could I enjoy one pleasant hour, nor know what to talk about; for, in short, I have no great confidence in them. Friends who have no religion cannot be long our friends.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter to Leopold Mozart (Mannheim, 2 February 1778), from The letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1769-1791, translated, from the collection of Ludwig Nohl, by Lady [Grace] Wallace (Oxford University Press, 1865, digitized 2006) vol. I, # 91 (p. 164) http://books.google.com/books?vid=0SGwLiCNxu7qZ5ch&id=KEgBAAAAQAAJ&printsec=titlepage&dq=%22The+letters+of+Wolfgang+Amadeus+Mozart,+1769-1791%22&hl=en#PRA1-PA164,M1

Edward Jenner photo

“The highest powers in our nature are our sense of moral excellence, the principple of reason and reflection, benevolence to our creatures and our love of the Divine Being.”

Edward Jenner (1749–1823) English physician, scientist and pioneer of vaccination

The Life of Edward Jenner M.D. Vol. 2 (1838) by John Baron, p. 447

Cesare Lombroso photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Daniel Kahneman photo

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 19, "The illusion of understanding", page 201 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Michael Faraday photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
William Shakespeare photo
James Baldwin photo

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

"Me and My House" in Harper's (November 1955); republished in Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Source: The Fire Next Time

John Mayer photo
Warren Farrell photo
Dante Alighieri photo

“When we understand this we see clearly that the subject round which the alternative senses play must be twofold. And we must therefore consider the subject of this work [the Divine Comedy] as literally understood, and then its subject as allegorically intended. The subject of the whole work, then, taken in the literal sense only is "the state of souls after death" without qualification, for the whole progress of the work hinges on it and about it. Whereas if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is "man as by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, he becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice."”
Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex oportet esse subiectum circa quod currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum est de subiecto huius operis, prout ad litteram accipitur; deinde de subiecto, prout allegorice sententiatur. Est ergo subiectum totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post mortem simpliciter sumptus. Nam de illo et circa illum totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, subiectum est homo, prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est.

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian poet

Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 23–25), as translated by Charles Singleton in his essay "Two Kinds of Allegory" published in Dante Studies 1 (Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 87.
Epistolae (Letters)

Susanna Wesley photo
Oswald Mosley photo
Bill Skarsgård photo
Witold Pilecki photo
Sharon Tate photo
Rita Levi-Montalcini photo

“I never had any hesitation or regrets in this sense. My life has been enriched by excellent human relations, work and interests. I have never felt lonely.”

Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012) Italian neurologist

Of the fact that she never married; quoted in Associated Press obituary.

Cate Blanchett photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Camille Paglia photo

“I am being vilified by feminists for merely having a common-sense attitude about rape.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), The Rape Debate, Continued, p. 59
Context: I am being vilified by feminists for merely having a common-sense attitude about rape. I loathe this thing about date rape. Have twelve tequilas at a fraternity party and a guy asks you to go up to his room, and then you're surprised when he assaults you? Most women want to be seduced or lured. The more you study literature and art, the more you see it. Listen to Don Giovanni. Read The Faerie Queene. Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It’s part of the sizzle. Girls hurl themselves at guitarists, right down to the lowest bar band here. The guys are strutting. If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them. Women have the right to freely choose and to say yes or no. Everyone should be personally responsible for what happens in life. I see the sexual impulse as egotistical and dominating, and therefore I have no problem understanding rape. Women have to understand this correctly and they'll protect themselves better. If a real rape occurs, it's got to go to the police. The business of having a campus grievance committee decide whether or not a rape is committed is an outrageous infringement of civil liberties. Today, on an Ivy League campus, if a guy tells a girl she's got great tits, she can charge him with sexual harassment. Chickenshit stuff. Is this what strong women do?

Sophie Scholl photo

“I'm still so remote from God that I don't even sense his presence when I pray.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl (1987) edited by Inge Jens, translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn; also in Voices of the Holocaust : Resistors, Liberation, Understanding (1997) by Lorie Jenkins McElroy
Context: I'm still so remote from God that I don't even sense his presence when I pray. Sometimes when I utter God's name, in fact, I feel like sinking into a void. It isn't a frightening or dizzying sensation, it's nothing at all — and that's far more terrible. But prayer is the only remedy for it, and however many devils scurry around inside me, I shall cling to the rope God has thrown me in Jesus Christ, even if my numb hands can no longer feel it.

Steve Jobs photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
José Baroja photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Louise Erdrich photo
Daisaku Ikeda photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Alfred Adler photo

“A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.”

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist
W.B. Yeats photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Neil deGrasse Tyson photo

“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. —NDT”

Variant: The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
Source: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Stephen Hawking photo
Zig Ziglar photo

“Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

As quoted in Created for Excellence : 12 keys to Godly Success (1996) by Kevin Baerg, p. 25

Veronica Franco photo
Thomas Sankara photo
Jim Morrison photo
Peter Singer photo
Gabriela Mistral photo
Thomas Paine photo
Frank Herbert photo
Pablo Picasso photo

“The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Galileo Galilei photo

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

Variant: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Source: Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
Context: 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.
Context: 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.<!-- ¶22

Terence McKenna photo

“We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

The Archaic Revival (1991)
Context: The Beliefs of a Witoto shaman and the beliefs of a Princeton phenomenologist have an equal chance of being correct, and there are no arbiters of who is right. Here is something we have not assimilated. We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Rick Riordan photo
Osamu Tezuka photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“I have no sense of why I lost my freedom and if you do not know how you lost something, how can you protect it?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Living in Fear Is Worse Than Imprisonment, 2012

Martin Luther photo
Baron d'Holbach photo

“When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.”

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist

Good Sense without God, or, Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas (London: W. Stewart & Co., ca. 1900) ( Project Gutenberg e-text http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/gsens10.txt), preface
Translator unknown. Original publication in French at Amsterdam, 1772, as Le bon sens ("Common Sense"), and often attributed to John Meslier.

Louisa May Alcott photo
Benito Mussolini photo

“We deny the existence of two classes, because there are many more than two classes. We deny that human history can be explained in terms of economics. We deny your internationalism. That is a luxury article which only the elevated can practise, because peoples are passionately bound to their native soil.
We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech (21 June 1921), Ion Smeaton Munro, Through Fascism to World Power: A History of the Revolution in Italy, 27 January 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=DML39RmvsmYC&pg=PA120&dq=%E2%80%9CWe+deny+your+internationalism%22+mussolini&lr=&sig=gTHVLgfaIKPCn_jW8f0phjDKrAI,
1920s

Julius Evola photo
Joanna MacGregor photo
Richard Wurmbrand photo
Ludwig von Mises photo
Jean de La Bruyère photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo