"Humor is reason gone mad."
— Groucho Marx

"Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.
(Translation: The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.)"
— Blaise Pascal (Pascal's Pensees)

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
— Christopher Hitchens

"Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute."
— Mark Twain (Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings)

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name."
— Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason)

"Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason."
— Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)

"The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong."
— Carl Gustav Jung

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."
— Delos Banning McKown

"What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone."
— Alexander Poe

"Reason is powerless in the expression of Love."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about."
— C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!"
— Alexander Pope

"Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has."
— Martin Luther

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."
— Thomas Paine

"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you."
— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary."
— Ashleigh Brilliant

"Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places."
— A.C. Grayling (The Heart of Things: Applying Philosophy to the 21st Century)

"One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."
— Oscar Wilde

"We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man."
— Sam Harris

"Reason excludes faith," Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. "It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can't do it absolutely. That's because you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don't think God is interested in the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that."
— Mark Helprin

"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions."
— David Hume

""All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.""
— Immanuel Kant

"The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning."
— Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four)

"Reason, you'll always be half-blind."
— Marguerite Porete

"I felt for the tormented whirlwinds
Damned for their carnal sins
Committed when they let their passions rule their reason."
— Dante Alighieri

"I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are--or, at all events, that I must try and become one."
— Henrik Johan Ibsen (The Doll's House: A Play)

"Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking."
— Martin Heidegger

""A man always has two reasons for what he does--a good one, and the real one."


"
— J.P. Morgan

"He is not apprehended by reason, but by life."
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

"If we allow that human life can be governed by reason, the possibility of life is annihilated. "
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

"You can’t tax business. Business doesn’t pay taxes. It collects taxes."
— Ronald Reagan

"there are times when life's ends are so raveled that reason and sense cry out that we stop and gather them together again before we can proceed"
— Richard Wright

"Misuse of reason might yet return the world to pre-technological night; plenty of religious zealots hunger for just such a result, and are happy to use the latest technology to effect it."
— A.C. Grayling (The Heart of Things: Applying Philosophy to the 21st Century)

"To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap."
— Jostein Gaarder (Sophie's World)

"[D]ie Vernunft ist, wenn sie allein waltet, eine einengende Kraft; und unbewacht ist die Leidenschaft eine Flamme, die bis zur Selbstzerstörung brennt."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"But the death of spirit goes by another name. It is usually called the birth of reason.

The dreams of reason are, at this late date, everywhere to be seen, much like headstones in a cemetery. The inertia of a standard which prunes every tree to the dimensions of a utility pole will, with the same determination, core the heart out of the human personality. This fermenting mind, intoxicated by its heady sobriety, methodically slits its own throat, all the while mistaking the elongating wound for a smile.

When the spirit is free, according to Nietzsche, the head will be the bowels of the heart. In these top heavy days that have turned life topsy-turvy the head has little appetite for freedom. Instead it has developed a taste for coprophagy."
— Ed Lawrence

"Frei ist, wer der Vernunft gehorcht."
— John Milton