Mind

"All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know."

"A rational, moral being cannot, without infinite wrong, be converted into a mere instrument of others’ gratification. He is necessarily an end, not a means. A mind, in which are sown the seeds of wisdom, disinterestedness, firmness of purpose, and piety, is worth more than all the outward material interests of a world. It exists for itself, for its own perfection, and must not be enslaved to its own or others’ animal wants."

"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day."

"Reason will not lead to solution; I will end up lost in confusion"

"[T]he power of forming a good judgment and of distinguishing the true from the false, which is properly speaking what is called Good sense or Reason, is by nature equal in all men."

"Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue: Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true."

"Pagan philosophers set up reason as the sole guide of life, of wisdom and conduct; but Christian philosophy demands of us that we surrender our reason to the Holy Spirit; and this means that we no longer live for ourselves, but that Christ lives and reigns within us (Rom 12:1; Eph 4:23; Gal 2:20)."

"Within the brain's most secret cells A certain Lord Chief Justice dwells Of sovereign power, whom one and all With common voice, we Reason call."

"La felicité de l'homme consiste a vivre selon la raison."

"Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence."

"If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold."

"REASON, n. Propensitate of prejudice."

"Reason cannot remain a bare intellectual faculty; it must become a faculty of judgment dealing with the question of values."

"RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection."

"Pure Reason left to herself relieth on axioms and essential premises which she can neither question nor resolve."

"REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire."

"Reason is like a runner who doesn't know that the race is over, or, like Penelope, constantly undoing what it creates.... It is better suited to pulling things down than to building them up, and better at discovering what things are not, than what they are."

"Il n'est pas nécessaire de tenir les choses pour en raisonner."

"In the logic of science there is a principle as important as that of parsimony: it is that of sufficient reason. The former directs us to look for simplest causes, the later cautions us not to simplify so far that the explanation is inadequate to the facts to be explained....Parsimony is not itself a simple criterion of a good methodology; we cannot simply count the factors of explanation and say that the theory containing the smallest number is the best. The ideal of parsimony cannot be expressed without the proviso that the conditions for which it is a norm shall themselves be adequate."

"When he (Thomas Aquinas) wants to represent the activity of our reason in knowledge, he takes the image of the flight of birds and says: there is the bird that flies in a rotating, circular way, or the flight that goes forward and backward or the flight that goes from top to bottom, from bottom to top. Circular motion is contemplative motion, motion that goes forward is from cause to effect, backward is from effect to cause, from top to bottom is deduction, from bottom to top is induction. Remembering the flight of birds recalls all the formalities of cognitive activity."

"We should not in the field of Reason look to find less vary and veer than elsewhere in the flux of Life."

"Reason is omnivorous; it does not pasture exclusively in scientific fields."

"Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith"

"It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination."

"There is no just cause for apprehending that we shall be misled by the proper exercise of reason on any subject which may be proposed for our consideration. The only danger is of making an improper use of this faculty, which is one of the most common faults to which our nature is liable. Most men profess that they are guided by reason in forming their opinions; but if this were really the case, the world would not be overrun with error; there would not be so many absurd and dangerous opinions propagated and pertinaciously defended."

"Reason may be employed in two ways to establish a point: firstly, for the purpose of furnishing sufficient proof of some principle, as in natural science, where sufficient proof can be brought to show that the movement of the heavens is always of uniform velocity. Reason is employed in another way, not as furnishing a sufficient proof of a principle, but as confirming an already established principle, by showing the congruity of its results, as in astrology the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as established, because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be explained; not, however, as if this proof were sufficient, forasmuch as some other theory might explain them."

"Reason in man is rather like God in the world."

"We admire and revere the soul which can ride its own passions and force them into obedience to the dictates of reason."

"I think I am justified — though where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?"

"The Infinite, from which comes the impulse that lead us to activity, is not the highest Reason, but higher than reason."

"…He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men."

"He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave."

"I do not leave any verses, dogmas, nor any moulded standard principles as moral heritage. My moral heritage is science and reason. What I have done and intended to do for the Turkish nation lies in that. Anyone willing to appropriate my ideas for themselves after me will be my moral inheritors provided they would approve the guidance of science and reason on this axis."

"Peter was dull; he was at first Dull,—Oh, so dull—so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed— Still with his dulness was he cursed— Dull—beyond all conception—dull."

"Personally, I have a great admiration for stupidity."

"I'd all but given up my crusade to rid the world of fools…there are, I found, just too many!"

"La faute en est aux dieux, qui la firent si bête."

"The impenetrable stupidity of Prince George (son-in-law of James II.) served his turn. It was his habit, when any news was told him, to exclaim, "Est il possible?"—"Is it possible?""

"When the world begets too many fools, nature provides a Foolkiller."

"After a foolish action comes remorse."

"Weapons-Grade Stupidity: Tech-support slang for customer intelligence that is so low it poses a severe hazard to those who come in contact with it."

"Schad'um die Leut'! Sind sonst wackre Brüder. Aber das denkt, wie ein Seifensieder."

"Sand, salt, and an iron weight are easier to bear than the stupid person."

"It is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be stupid and speak lies."

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

"If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at."

"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."

"Until now, human intelligence, which is no more than a minute aspect of universal intelligence, has been distorted and misused by the ego. I call that “intelligence in the service of madness.” Splitting the atom requires great intelligence. Using that intelligence for building and stockpiling atom bombs is insane or at best extremely unintelligent. Stupidity is relatively harmless, but intelligent stupidity is highly dangerous. This intelligent stupidity, for which one could find countless obvious examples, is threatening our survival as a species."

"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens."