“Reason can always disarm the irrational. If reason finds itself to be irrational, it can disarm it; and if one finds reason and discovers that eating animals is immoral, unnecessary, and done largely for superstitious reasons, then one is delivered from the compulsion to do it.”

Interview in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Autumn Press, 1979), p. 82.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Reason can always disarm the irrational. If reason finds itself to be irrational, it can disarm it; and if one finds re…" by Brigid Brophy?
Brigid Brophy photo
Brigid Brophy 6
novelist, essayist 1929–1995

Related quotes

Aldous Huxley photo
Stephen King photo
Anthony de Mello photo

“For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Discovery
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Context: "Help us to find God."
"No one can help you there."
"Why not?"
"For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean."

Aron Ra photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Part I, p. 28.
The Autobiography (1818)
Context: I believe I have omitted mentioning that in my first Voyage from Boston, being becalm'd off Block Island, our People set about catching Cod and haul'd up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my Resolution of not eating animal Food and on this Occasion, I consider'd with my Master Tryon, the taking every Fish as a kind of unprovok'd Murder, since none of them had or ever could do us any Injury that might justify the Slaughter. All this seem'd very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great Lover of Fish, and when this came hot out of the Frying Pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between Principle and Inclination: till I recollected, that when the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs: Then, thought I, if you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you. So I din'd upon Cod very heartily and continu'd to eat with other People, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable Diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

Teal Swan photo
Margaret Atwood photo

“I do view the march of technology as kind of inevitable. But I would like to accompany it with reason. And one form of reasoning that’s useful in these debates is to find precedence.”

David Krakauer (1967) scientist

Complexity and Stupidity, Sam Harris interviews David Krakauer, podcast November 13, 2016 https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/complexity-stupidity

Paul Karl Feyerabend photo

Related topics