1,806 Quotes About Reason

People always say things like Well I would, but... and that's where they fuck up. As soon as they give a reason for why they can't do something, they're already defeated.

I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

But what is the way forward? I know what it isn't. It's not, as we once believed, plenty to eat and a home with all the modern conveniences. It's not a 2,000-mile-long wall to keep Mexicans out or more accurate weapons to kill them. It's not a better low-fat meal or a faster computer speed. It's not a deodorant, a car, a soft drink, a skin cream. The way forward is found on a path through the wilderness of the head and heart---reason and emotion. Thinking, knowing, understanding.

...reason rationalizes reality for him (Dr. Nathan) as it does for the rest of us, in the Freudian sense of providing a more palatable or convenient explanation, and there are so many subjects about which we should not be reasonable.

Remember, the thoughts that you think and the statements you make regarding yourself determine your mental attitude. If you have a worthwhile objective, find the one reason why you can achieve it rather than hundreds of reasons why you can’t.

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice — and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man — by choice; he has to hold his life as a value — by choice; he has to learn to sustain it — by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues — by choice.A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

Could it be that we lost something because had we not lost it, we would have lost ourselves?

The greatest lie of all is that we live in a strictly empirical world. We actually live in an analytic, mathematical world of reason and logic, and its flip side is the empirical world of phenomena. Your reason isn’t empty and futile, dealing only with ideals and nothing real. Your reason, just like your senses, feelings and intuitions, directly encounters reality, but noumenally rather than phenomenally, rationally rather than irrationally.

Când analizăm mai atent felul în care ne facem observațiile și ne construim concepte despre ceea ce ne înconjoară, ajugem să ne întrebăm dacă avem motive întemeiate să credem că există o realitate obiectivă.