The Quotes canon

Sourced and curated.

Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
David Hume4 quotes
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. — David Hume · 1739The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. — David Hume · 1748If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning, concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. — David Hume · 1748Opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, tho' obscure, regions of philosophy. — David Hume · 1757
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. — Blaise Pascal · 1662The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. — Blaise Pascal · 1662It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. — Blaise Pascal · 1662
Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either. — G.K. Chesterton · 1926Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. — G.K. Chesterton · 1908Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of "touching" a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it. — G.K. Chesterton · 1902
If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins. — Benjamin Franklin · 1749The Way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason. — Benjamin Franklin · 1758
Carl Jung2 quotes
We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy. — Carl Jung · 1921The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. — Carl Jung · 1933
Edward Coke2 quotes
Reason is the life of the law, nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason. — Edward Coke · 1628How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law. — Edward Coke · 1628
John Locke2 quotes
Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties. — John Locke · 1690There are very few lovers of truth for truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it, loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end. — John Locke · 1690
Sure He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused. — William Shakespeare · 1616Ask me no reason why I love you, for though Love use Reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his counselor. — William Shakespeare · 1602
Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1928
All that is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation. — Charles Baudelaire · 1863
When prejudice commands, reason is silent. — Claude Adrien Helvetius · 1771
The sleep of reason produces monsters. — Francisco de Goya · 1799
When reason fails, the devil helps! — Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866
Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own reason! This is the motto of the Enlightenment. — Immanuel Kant · 1784
If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold. — Louis Brandeis · 1924
It's our wits that make us men. — Malcom Wallace · 1995
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but-more frequently than not-struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God. — Martin Luther · 1569
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. — Milan Kundera · 1984
Pythagoras1 quote
The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone. — Pythagoras
Seneca1 quote
Man is a reasoning animal. — Seneca · 65
Sophocles1 quote
Reason is God's crowning gift to man. — Sophocles · 442 BC
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors. — T.H. Huxley · 1880