Quotes about reason

There is a sense of reason's fingernails scrabbling to keep their hold, as one slides towards something which is not accountable; not, by ordinary standards, quite sane...

I suppose we all have a number of carefully furnished, non-communicating rooms in our minds.

At such moments the voice of reason always sounds like blasphemy and dissenters are of the devil.

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. (p29)

“Hormones are everything, Turpin,” she said to the bird on her shoulder. “Brains are nice, and looks are nice, and logic’s even nicer; but hormones run the show. For everyone, even for me and you.”

God had given men reason, by which they could find out things for themselves, but He had given animals knowledge which did not depend on reason, and which was much more prompt and perfect in its way, and by which they had often saved the lives of men.

The human mind is a pattern, nothing more. The first dim flicker of awareness in the evolving forebrain of Australopithecus carried that pattern in embryo; and down through all the ages, as the human neural engine increased in power and complexity, gained control of its environment in geometrically expanding increments, the pattern never varied.

Man clings to his self-orientation as the psychological center of the Universe. He can face any challenge within that framework, suffer any loss, endure any hardship—so long as the structure remains intact.

Without it he’s a mind adrift in a trackless infinity—lacking any scale against which to measure his aspirations, his losses, his victories.

Even when the light of his intellect shows him that the structure is itself a product of his brain; that infinity knows no scale, and eternity no duration—still he clings to his self-non-self concept, as a philosopher clings to a life he knows must end, to ideals he knows are ephemeral, to causes he knows will be forgotten.

“Just what is your position here?”

“I’m an adviser to his Majesty.” Nicodaeus smiled blandly. “He thinks I’m a master of magic, of course, but among these feather-heads a little common sense is sufficient to earn one a reputation as a wise man.”

Foster shook his head. “The inherent inertia of the human mind,” he said. “How it fights to resist new ideas.”

Strangely, he wasn’t scared at all. He was even more coldly calm, calmly analytical. And he knew that he would have to be if he was to stand a chance to win this war. If he was to win it, his mind would have to be his major weapon; firearms might win a battle, but never the war.

But feeling is so different from knowing. My common sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense has no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul.

What is remarkable is that human beings are actually able to carry out this code-breaking operation, that the human mind has the necessary intellectual equipment for us to "unlock the secrets of nature"...