Reasoning Quotes

“Reason is not always reasonable”

“Reason is not always reasonable”

“You wake up for a reason, you eat for a reason, you dress for a reason and you sleep for a reason. All we do run on the pivot of reasons. For what reasons do you fear? For what reasons do you think? For what reasons do you talk? For what reasons do you open that door each day? For what reasons do you love? For what reasons do you hate? Until we get the reasonable reasons to reason, we shall always ponder over the reasons why we reasoned or we could not reason.”

“It is reasonable to reason with God because when you only rely on human reasoning, you will be diverted from your purpose.”

“Reason is up to these demands because it is an open-ended combinatorial system, an engine for generating an unlimited number of new ideas. Once it is programmed with a basic self-interest and an ability to communicate with others, its own logic will impel it, in the fullness of time, to respect the interests of ever-increasing numbers of others. It is reason too that can always take note of the shortcomings of previous exercises of reasoning, and update and improve itself in response. And if you detect a flaw in this argument, it is reason that allows you to point it out and defend an alternative.”

“Somewhere Chesterton writes--I think it is Chesterton--that you cannot reason a man from a position that reason didn’t deliver him to.”

“Sorrow is the violent smashing of reason, in that reason has no power over it.”

“in the modern era, many thinkers began to mistrust faith, viewing it as 'blind' and an enemy of reason. Their watchword was 'reason alone.' One of the difficulties of this stance is that reason cannot test its own reliability, any more than soapstone can test its own hardness. Any argument, accomplished by reasoning, that what reasoning accomplishes can be trusted, would be circular, because it would take for granted the very thing that it was trying to prove.Suppose I am at the window of a burning building. Although I can hear the firemen calling to me from far below, I cannot see them because of all the smoke. They are telling me to jump. Though I may have every reason to believe that they will catch me in their net, I may not trust them enough to overcome my fear, and so, hesitating, I burn to death. Obviously, my reasons are not the same as trust; faith surpasses reason. Even so they are reasons for trust; though faith surpasses reason, it is not irrational.”

“Now we’ve a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less intelligible, and when reason thus defeats its own purpose something has to be changed in the structure of our reason itself.”

“Facts and science without the presence of wisdom and reason are worth a little less than nothing, while wisdom and reason without the presence of facts and science are worth far more than people without wisdom and reason are capable to expect.”

“Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.”