“Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.”
“I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.”
“Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.”
“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”
“Our passion and principals are constantly in a frenzy, but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.”
“He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; and he that dares not reason is a slave.”
“Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.”
“There is really nothing more to say except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.”
“To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.”
“Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.”
“As if reasoning were any kind of writing or talking which tends to convince people that some doctrine or measure is true and right.”
“Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice.”
“I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”
“The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape.”
“Sure, he, that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason, to fast in us unused.”
“Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.”
“Reason is like an officer when the king appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; Go is the sun.”
“If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.”
“Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.”
“He that speaketh against his own reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain that no man serves God with a good conscience who serves him against his reason.”
“Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.”
“As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.”
“Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.”
“Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.”
“O reason, reason, abstract phantom of the waking state, I had already expelled you from my dreams, now I have reached a point where those dreams are about to become fused with apparent realities: now there is only room here for myself.”
“Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information -- never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good -- he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world.”
“Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.”
“Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies reason.”
“It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.”