Quotes about reason

Mind is a captive of the body.

The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them. If this is true, then reason is simply the methodizer of the imagination.

Whatever doubt might rise, he knew that he was right. But the rightness was an intellectual rightness and the doubt emotional.

An unquestioned creed is a noose about the throat of Reason.

The only satisfied rationalists today are blinkered scientists or Marxists.

But reason was only a created thing, imposed with faith upon the world, and the stars promise nothing to no one.

Viewed from a wholly logical point of view the bearing and rearing of children is a thoroughly unattractive proposition. To a woman it means pain and endless worry. To a man it means extra work extending over many years to support his family. So, if we were wholly logical about sex, we should probably not bother to reproduce at all. Nature takes care of this by making us utterly and wholly irrational.

Cautious deliberation based on purely rational arguments can save us from many errors and dangers. ...But ...there will always be a fundamental complementarity between deliberation and decision. ...The decision finally... pushing away all the arguments... The decision may be the result of deliberation, but it is... complementary... it excludes deliberation. Even the most important decisions... contain this inevitable element of irrationality. ...[I]t cannot be avoided that some real or apparent truth form the basis of life; and this fact should be acknowledged with regard to those groups... whose basis is different from our own.

I believe that intelligence and rationality will always be primary no matter what shape sentient creatures take. To not think that would be to doubt the value of life itself.

All our rationalities are invented to justify what we were going to do anyway before we thought of any reasons.

Your trust in rationality makes you irrational.

Reason … contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order — for “rational” is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.