Human Reason Quotes

• Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it's so important that we don't rely on it.

  Veronica Roth

  Evil, Important, Divergent

  Veronica Roth (2013). “Divergent Trilogy”, p.54, HarperCollins UK

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• Human reason can excuse any evil.

  Veronica Roth

  Evil, Divergent, Excuse

  Veronica Roth (2013). “Divergent Trilogy”, p.54, HarperCollins UK

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• Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Funny, Sarcastic, Art

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2450, Delphi Classics

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• Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Integrity, Learning, Knowledge

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Chap. 3 : The Common Sense of Progress, 1960.

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• The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.

  Blaise Pascal

  Weakness, Reason, Humans

  Blaise Pascal (1829). “Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects”, p.73

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• Can reason be an idol? Certainly. The philosophy of rationalism puts human reason in the place of God as the source and standard of all truth.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Philosophy, Idols, Reason

  Nancy Pearcey (2015). “Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes”, p.43, David C Cook

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• Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It puts what should be above things as they are. It does not know Jew from Greek nor slave from master.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Beautiful, Book, Greek

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Incantation”

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• Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Law, Political, Earth

  Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (2015). “The Spirit of Laws”, p.20, Library of Alexandria

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• Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.

  Thomas E. Mann

  Fate, Needs, Reason

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• There is no opposing brutal force to the stratagems of human reason.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Reason, Force, Brutal

  Sir Roger L'Estrange (1738). “Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: With Morals and Reflections”, p.252

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• Love is a brilliant illustration of a principle everywhere discoverable: namely, that human reason lives by turning the friction of material forces into the light of ideal goods.

  George Santayana

  Love, Light, Illustration

  George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2013). “The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Society, Volume VII, Book Two”, p.27, MIT Press

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• The universe, as we see it, is the result of regularly working forces, having a causal connection with each other and therefore capable of being understood by human reason.

  Ludwig Buchner

  Work, Science, Connections

  Ludwig Büchner (1891). “Force and Matter: Or, Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe. With a System of Morality Based Thereon”

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• Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Animal, Reason

  Samuel Johnson (1841). “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia: the vanity of human wished: The History of Solÿman and Almena by John Langhorne”, p.41

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• God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Mad, Wicked

  Edmund Burke (1852). “The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke”, p.259

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• No conclusions can be more agreeable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of human reason and capacity.

  David Hume

  Discovery, Weakness, Limits

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1993). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.51, Hackett Publishing

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• Embrace truth as it is revealed to-day by human reason.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Atheism, Reason, Embrace

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• Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.

  Walter Bagehot

  Strong, Heart, Government

  'The English Constitution' (1867) 'The Monarchy'

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• What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Circles, Paper, Violence

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2015). “His Last Bow and Others: Sherlock Holmes Collections”, p.63, 谷月社

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• It seems certain, that though a man, in a flush of humour, after intense reflection on the many contradictions and imperfections of human reason, may entirely renounce all belief and opinion, it is impossible for him to persevere in this total scepticism, or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours.

  David Hume

  Men, Reflection, Imperfection

  David Hume, Peter Millican (2008). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, p.153, Oxford University Press

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• so it is with human reason, which strives not against faith, when enlightened, but rather furthers and advances it.

  Martin Luther

  Reason, Enlightened, Strive

  Martin Luther, Alexander Chalmers (1857). “The Table Talk of Martin Luther”, p.144

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• In a word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel, to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity, far otherwise than mere human reason can; and while evil oppresses us, it teaches how these virtues throw light upon the darkness, and how, after this poor, miserable existence of ours on earth, there is another and an eternal life.

  Martin Luther

  Book, Light, Evil

  Martin Luther (1848). “The Table Talk Or Familiar Discourse of Martin Luther”, p.2

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• Most specifically, irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable systems. By that I mean that they deny the basic humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within or are served by them.

  George Ritzer

  Mean, People, Humanity

  George Ritzer (1994). “Sociological Beginnings: On the Origins of Key Ideas in Sociology”, McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages

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• Human reason is a pin dancing on the head of an angel, so small is it in comparison to the Divine vastness that encircles us.

  Margaret Atwood

  Angel, Dancing, Vastness

  Margaret Atwood (2009). “The Year of the Flood”, p.236, Anchor

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• Water cannot rise higher than its source, neither can human reason.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Water, Reason, Source

  "The Witness of the Holy Spirit". Book by Charles Prest, p. 18, 1867.

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• Let us enquire. Who, then, shall challenge the words? Why are they challenged. And by whom? By those who call themselves the guardians of morality, and who are the constituted guardians of religion. Enquiry, it seems, suits not them. They have drawn the line, beyond which human reason shall not pass -- above which human virtue shall not aspire! All that is without their faith or above their rule, is immorality, is atheism, is -- I know not what.

  Frances Wright

  Challenges, Atheism, Suits

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