Inspirational Quotes on Reasoning

“There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.”

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.”

“We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.”

“What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.”

“White is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.”

“Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.”

“The shortest answer is doing.”

“I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.”

“Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion: The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.”

“The secret heart is devotion's temple; there the saint lights the flame of purest sacrifice, which burns unseen but not unaccepted.”

“A sound economy is a sound understanding brought into action. It is calculation realized; it is the doctrine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foreseeing contingencies and providing against them; it is expecting contingencies and being prepared for them.”

“The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.”

“I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.”

“We settle things by a majority vote, and the psychological effect of doing that is to create the impression that the majority is probably right. Of course, on any fine issue the majority is sure to be wrong. Think of taking a majority vote on the best music. Jazz would win over Chopin. Or on the best novel. Many cheap scribblers would win over Tolstoy. And any day a prizefight will get a bigger crowd, larger gate receipts and wider newspaper publicity than any new revelation of goodness, truth or beauty could hope to achieve in a century.”

“There need not be in religion, or music, or art, or love, or goodness, anything that is against reason; but never while the sun shines will we get great religion, or music, or art, or love, or goodness, without going beyond reason.”

“As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.”

“People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”

“Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.”

“I know not if the dark or bright shall be by lot; if that wherein my hopes delight be best or not.”