Human Reason Quotes

In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea. ~ Dave Hickey

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

The leading error of the human mind, - the bane of human happiness - the perverter of human virtue ... is Religion - that dark coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion - that poisoner of human felicity! It is Religion - that blind guide of human reason! It is Religion - that dethroner of human virtue! which lies at the root of all the evil and all the misery that pervade the world! ~ Frances Wright

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

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

We are all caught in the stream of a complicated legacy - a proof of the limits of human reason, a proof of our boundlessness. A declaration that were were down here on this crowded, lonely planet, a declaration that we mattered, we living clumps of ash, that each of us was once somebody, that we strove for what we could never have, that we could admit as much. That was us - funny and lousy and great all at once. ~ Janna Levin

The science of the church is neglected for the study of geometry, and they lose sight of Heaven while they are employed in measuring the earth. Euclid is perpetually in their hands. Aristotle and Theophrastus are the objects of their admiration; and they express an uncommon reverence for the works of Galen. Their errors are derived from the abuse of the arts and sciences of the infidels, and they corrupt the simplicity of the gospel by the refinements of human reason. ~ Edward Gibbon

Skepticism is thus a resting-place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds itself, so that for the future it may be able to choose its path with more certainty. But it is no dwelling-place for permanent settlement. Such can be obtained only through perfect certainty in our knowledge, alike of the objects themselves and of the limits within which all our knowledge of objects is enclosed. ~ Immanuel Kant

All human thought, including scientific thought, rests on premises which cannot be validated by human reason and which came from historical epoch to historical epoch. ~ Leo Strauss

106. A GREAT CITADEL The most likely allegory is that the Citadel represents philosophy (that is, human reason without the light of God) surrounded by seven walls which represent the seven liberal arts, ~ Dante Alighieri

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

Science and technology has tried to offer an alternative to religion by making a god out of human reason, but that didn't work out too well. ~ Thomas Keating

Human reason is by nature architectonic."

Critique of Pure Reason ~ Kant

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. ~ Charles De Secondat

And whatsoever thou art not enabled to understand, that commit without anxiety to Almighty God. God deceiveth thee not; he is deceived who believeth too much in himself. God walketh with the simple, revealeth Himself to the humble, giveth understanding to babes, openeth the sense to pure minds, and hideth grace from the curious and proud. Human reason is weak and may be deceived; but true faith cannot be deceived. ~ Thomas A Kempis

There is no opposing brutal force to the stratagems of human reason. ~ Roger L'Estrange

It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

Human reason can excuse any evil. ~ Veronica Roth

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

Could the observers of the crucifixion "clearly perceive" the ways of God? No - even though they were looking right at a wonder of grace. They saw only darkness and pain, and the categories of human reason are sure God cannot be working in and through that. So they called Jesus to "come down now from the cross," sneering, "He saved others . . . but he can't save himself." (Matt 27:42 NIV). But they did not realize he could save others only because he did not save himself. Only ~ Timothy J. Keller

If we ever do find a complete theory of the universe, it would be a great triumph of human reason but it wouldn't leave much for us to do. We need an intellectual challenge. ~ Stephen Hawking

In its quest to discover how the patterns of reality are organised, the story of modern science hints at a picture of a set of Chinese puzzle boxes, each one more intricately structured and wondrous than the last. Every time the final box appears to have been reached, a key has been found which has opened up another, revealing a new universe even more breathtakingly improbable in its conception. We are now forced to suspect that, for human reason, there is no last box, that in some deeply mysterious, virtually unfathomable, self-reflective way, every time we open a still smaller box, we are actually being brought closer to the box with which we started, the box which contains our own conscious experience of the world. This is why no theory of knowledge, no epistemology, can ever escape being consumed by its own self-generated paradoxes. And this is why we must consider the universe to be irredeemably mystical. ~ Bob Hamilton

It is clear now why Christianity played a significant role in launching the scientific revolution in the first place. Only a biblical worldview provides an adequate epistemology for science. First, a rational God created the world with an intelligible structure, and second, he created humans in his image. In the words of historian Richard Cohen, science required the concept of a "rational creator of all things," along with the corollary that "we lesser rational beings might, by virtue of that Godlike rationality, be able to decipher the laws of nature." Theologian Christopher Kaiser states the same idea succinctly: the early scientists assumed that "the same Logos that is responsible for its ordering is also reflected in human reason. ~ Nancy Pearcey

Every type of destruction that human philosophy, human science, human reason, human art, human cunning, human force, and human brutality could bring to bear against this Book, and yet the Bible stands absolutely unshaken today. At times almost all the wise and great of the earth have been pitted against the Bible, and only an obscure few for it. Yet it has stood. ~ R.A. Torrey

The only reason I'm writing this down is to show how human reason, even very sharp and exact human reason, can get crazily confused and thrown off the track. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Any journey in life, if not done for human reasons of understanding and love, would be a very empty and lonely one. ~ Tim Robbins

As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. ~ Ambrose Bierce

It is fortunate, I think, that nature is not bounded by human reason and by laboratory work and experimentation, for by the laws of pure reason and by microscopic investigation, it might easily have been proved, long before this, that children could not be born. ~ Maria Montessori

And even though he's the father of capitalism and wrote the most famous and maybe the best book ever on why some nations are rich and others are poor, Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments wrote as eloquently as anyone ever has on the futility of pursuing money with the hope of finding happiness. How do you reconcile that with the fact that no one did more than Adam Smith to make capitalism and self-interest respectable? That is a puzzle I try to unravel toward the end of this book. Besides the emptiness of excessive materialism, Smith understood the potential we have for self-deception, the danger of unintended consequences, the seductive lure of fame and power, the limitations of human reason, and the unseen sources of what makes our lives both so complex and yet at times so orderly. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a book of observations about what makes us tick. As a bonus, almost in passing, Smith tells us how to lead the good life in the fullest sense of that phrase. ~ Russ Roberts

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing. ~ Bertrand Russell

In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Deity, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.
Religion's first lesson is humility; its fruit, charity. In the great and sublime ends of Providence, little things are lost, and least of all is he imbued with a right spirit who believes that insignificant observances, subtleties of doctrine, and minor distinctions, enter into the great essentials of the Christian character. The wisest thing for him who is disposed to cavil at the immaterial habits of his neighbor, to split straws on doctrine, to fancy trifles of importance, and to place the man before principles, would be to distrust himself. ~ James Fenimore Cooper

Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance ... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason. ~ Charles De Secondat

All the fallacies of human reason had to be exhausted, before the light of a high truth could meet with ready acceptance. ~ Max Muller

Now having travelled from the pride of man in the High Renaissance and the Enlightenment down to the present despair, we can understand where modern people are. They have no place for a personal God. But equally they have no place for man as man, or for love, or for freedom, or for significance. This brings a crucial problem. Beginning only from man himself, people affirm that man is only a machine. But those who hold this position cannot live like machines! If they could, there would be no tensions in their intellectual position or in their lives. But even people who believe they are machines cannot live like machines, and thus they must "leap upstairs" against their reason and try to find something which gives meaning to life, even though to do so they have to deny their reason.
This was a solution Leonardo da Vinci and the men of the Renaissance never would have accepted, even if, like Leonardo they ended their thinking in despondency. They would not have done so, for they would have considered it intellectual suicide to separate meaning and values from reason this way. And they would have been right. Such a solution is intellectual suicide, and one may question the intellectual integrity of those who accept such a position when their starting point was pride in the sufficiency of human reason. ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

And of all illumination which human reason can give, none is comparable to the discovery of what we are, our nature, our obligations, what happiness we are capable of, and what are the means of attaining it. ~ Adam Weishaupt

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

An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns. ~ Terry Eagleton

Hume argued powerfully that human reason is fundamentally similar to that of the other animals, founded on instinct rather than quasi-divine insight into things. ~ David Hume

Winter and Summer
While it's summer people say
Winter is the better season.
Such is human reason.
Kamijima Onitsura ~ Reiko Chiba

As regards the soul, many people thought that its nature cannot easily be investigated, and some have even dared say that human reason shows us that the soul dies with the body and that the contrary view is held by faith alone; however, the Lateran Council, held under Leo X (Session 8), condemns them and explicitly commands Christian philosophers to defeat their arguments and prove the truth to the best of their abilities, and therefore I too have not hesitated to take on this challenge. ~ Rene Descartes

[sacred] doctrine is especially based upon arguments from authority, inasmuch as its principles are obtained by revelation: thus we ought to believe on the authority of those to whom the revelation has been made. Nor does this take away from the dignity of this doctrine, for although the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest, yet the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest. ~ Thomas Aquinas

Between two beings there is always the barrier of words. Man has so many ears and speaks so many languages. Should it nevertheless be possible to understand one another? Is real communication possible if word and language betray us every time? Shall, in the end, only the language of tanks and guns prevail and not human reason and understanding? ~ Joost Meerloo

I am aware that true miracles, things unexplained by human reason, can only occur when Jesus does them. ~ Gail Davis

On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began
that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature. ~ Leo Tolstoy

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

There is no gainsaying the fact that this suggested program will strike most people as impossibly "radical" and "unrealistic"; any suggestion for changing the status quo, no matter how slight, can always be considered by someone as too radical, so that the only thoroughgoing escape from the charge of impracticality is never to advocate any change whatever in existing conditions. But to take this approach is to abandon human reason, and to drift in animal- or plant-like manner with the tide of events. ~ Murray N. Rothbard

Now it seems that everything in the world stems from sources other than God, since the products of nature have their source in nature; deliberate effects can be traced back to human reason or will as their source. There is no need then to assume that God exists. ~ Thomas Aquinas

We are fallen fools, most of our philosophy is not "the proper use of human reason" but the improper use of human reason. ~ Peter Kreeft

In this valley, Love is represented by fire, Reason by smoke. When Love bursts into flame, Reason is forthwith dissipated like smoke. Reason cannot coexist with Love's mania, for Love has nothing whatever to do with human Reason. If ever you attain a clear vision of the unseen world, then only will you be able to realize the source of Love. By the odour of Love every atom in the world is intoxicated. It owes its existence to the existence of Love. If ~ Farid Al-Din Attar

He developed his revolutionary philosophy, with its grounding not in the Bible or ancient writers but in human reason, and became famous and infamous for it. ~ Russell Shorto

Hegel said that `truth` is subjective, thus rejecting the existence of any `truth` above or beyond human reason. All knowledge is human knowledge. ~ Jostein Gaarder

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

[The] right of the individual is co-extensive with its determinate power. ...
Nature's bounds are not set by the laws of human reason which aim only at man's true interest and his preservation ... man is but a particle. ~ Baruch Spinoza

When once passion takes part in the game, the human reason, unassisted by Grace, has about as much chance of retaining its hold on truths already gained as a snowflake has of retaining its consistency in the mouth of a blast furnace. ~ C.S. Lewis

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

The liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man would venture to write on any subject, however, pure his purpose, without an attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other. From minds thus subdued by the fear of punishment, there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason. ~ Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted. ~ George Boole

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it. Strange ~ John Stuart Mill

The same thing happens in the search for the laws of historical movement.
The movement of mankind, proceeding from a countless number of human wills, occurs continuously.
To comprehend the laws of this movement is the goal of history. But in order to comprehend the laws of the continuous movement of the sum of all individual wills, human reason allows for arbitrary, discrete units. The first method of history consists in taking an arbitrary series of continuous events and examining it separately from others, whereas there is not and cannot be a beginning to any event, but one event always continuously follows another. The second method consists in examining the actions of one person, a king, a commander, as the sum of individual wills, whereas the sum of individual wills is never expressed in the activity of one historical person.
Historical science in its movement always takes ever smaller units for examination, and in this way strives to approach the truth. But however small the units that history takes, we feel that allowing for a unit that is separate from another, allowing for the beginning of some phenomenon, and allowing for the notion that all individual wills are expressed in the actions of one historical person, is false in itself.
Any conclusion of historical science, without the least effort on the part of criticism, falls apart like dust, leaving nothing behind, only as a result of the fact that criticism selects as an object for observation a ~ Leo Tolstoy

Human reason has the peculiar fate ... that it is burdened with questions that it cannot dismiss ... but which it also cannot answer. ~ Immanuel Kant

The smiles of infants are said to be the first fruits of human reason. ~ Henry Norman Hudson

The history of the thing might amuse you," he said. "When first I became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and Priests of Prey. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, 'Down! down! presumptuous human reason!' they found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire violence--the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is the Law.' Well, well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair to the President of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in Europe. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Magic has power to experience and fathom things which are inaccessible to human reason. For magic is a great secret wisdom, just as reason is a great public folly. ~ Paracelsus

I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza ... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason. ~ Albert Einstein

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

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. ~ Bertrand Russell

Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Today we have different idols. . . We have trusted in human reason, science, and technology to solve our problems and progress toward a better world and a prosperous life. Yet idolatry brings death. ~ Craig G. Bartholomew

First the lover must learn charity and keep God's law. Then he shall be blessed a hundredfold, and he shall do great things without great effort, and bear all pain without suffering. And so his life will surpass human reason indeed. ~ Hadewijch

I have learned to be less confident in the conclusions of human reason, and give more credit to the honesty of contrary opinions. ~ Thomas Jefferson

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. ~ Leo Tolstoy

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

When did this game of life become so unfair that we blame individuals rather than the circumstances that prevent them from achievement? This is know as the fundamental attribution error in human reason. When other people screw up, it's because they are stupid or losers, but when I screw up it's because of my circumstances. ~ Bruce Hood

Philosophy has been described as thinking about thinking, and all Christians should do that. The term comes from two Greek words, philia ("love") and sophia ("wisdom"), thus "loving wisdom." Nothing anti-Christian appears in that definition. Problems arise if we seek wisdom apart from God, or elevate human reason above Him, but according to Proverbs 4:5-7, God's people should love and seek wisdom.
Formal philosophy is divided into three major areas-incidentally, all core Christian issues: (1) Metaphysics,
which asks questions about the nature of reality: "What is real?" "Is the basic essence of the world matter, or spirit, or something else?" (2) Epistemology, which addresses issues concerning truth and knowledge: "What do we know?" "How do we know it?" "Why do we think it's true?" (3) Ethics, which considers moral problems: "What is right and wrong?" "Are moral values absolute or relative?" "What is the good life, and how do we achieve it? ~ Rick Cornish

15. "Master Filippus believes that three disciplines define us as humans," Miri said while they walked to the peat pits. "History, Philosophy, and Poetry. History is human memory, the examination of what came before us. Philosophy is human reason, or an attempt to make sense of what is. Poetry is human imagination, seeking to express what is, even while dreaming of what might be. History, Philosophy, and Poetry - that's what sets humans apart from animals. ~ Shannon Hale

Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing. ~ Claude Levi-Strauss

Juries must, of necessity, be governed, in reaching many results through inferences from other facts, by certain laws of nature and human reason. They are often obliged to infer one thing from another, and this, whether that other be a fact direct or circumstantial. ~ Levi Woodbury

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

To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap. ~ Jostein Gaarder

The Greeks' sculpture and athletics celebrated the human form, their literature and music human passion, their discourse and philosophy human reason. In ~ Steven Pressfield

Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals. ~ Samuel Johnson

I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus

He who wholly renounces himself, and relies not on mere human reason, will make good progress in the Scriptures; but the world comprehends them not, from ignorance of that mortification which is the gift of God's word. ~ Martin Luther

We have not begun to live', Yeats writes, 'until we conceive life as a tragedy.' Newman confessed that he considered most men to be irretrievably damned, although he spent his life 'trying to make that truth less terrible to human reason'. Goethe could call his life 'the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever'. Martin Luther told a woman who wished him a long life: 'Madam, rather than live forty more years, I would give up my chance of paradise.' No, the Outsider does not make light work of living; at the best, it is hard going; at the worst (to borrow a phrase from Eliot) 'an intolerable shirt of flame',

It was this vision that made Axel declare: 'As for living, our servants will do that for us.' Axel was a mystic; at least, he had the makings of a mystic. For that is just what the mystic says: 'I refuse to Uve.' But he doesn't intend to die. There is another way of living that involves a sort of death: 'to die in order to Uve'. Axel would have locked himself up in his castle on the Rhine and read Hermetic philosophy. He saw men and the world as Newman saw them, as Eliot saw them in 'Burnt Norton':
... strained, time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time

But he was not willing to regard himself as hopelessly damned merely bec ~ Colin Wilson

So are demons forces that are totally external to us who seek to defy God? Are they just the shadow side of our own souls? Are they social constructions from a premodern era? Bottom line: Who cares? I don't think demons are something human reason can put its finger on. Or that human faith can resolve. I just know that demons, whether they be addictions or actual evil spirits, are not what Jesus wants for us, since basically every time he encounters them he tells them to piss off. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

The love of truth, virtue, and the happiness of mankind are specious pretexts, but not the inward principles that set divines at work; else why should they affect to abuse human reason, to disparage natural religion, to traduce the philosophers as they universally do? ~ George Berkeley

And as regards the Soul, although many have judged that its nature could not be easily discovered, and some have even ventured to say that human reason led to the conclusion that it perished with the body, and that the contrary opinion could be held through faith alone; nevertheless, since the Lateran Council, held under Leo X. (in session viii.), condemns these, and expressly enjoins Christian philosophers to refute their arguments, and establish the truth according to their ability, I have ventured to attempt it in this work. 4. ~ Rene Descartes

When human reason has exhausted every possibility, the children can go to their Father and receive all they need ... For only when you have become utterly dependent upon prayer and faith, only when all human possibilities have been exhausted, can you begin to reckon that God will intervene and work His miracles. ~ Basilea Schlink

Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right of religious freedom. ~ John Quincy Adams

They talk about who won and who lost. Human reason won. Mankind won. ~ Nikita Khrushchev

God is the true realistic point where human reason mostly, if not completely, breaks down. ~ Kedar Joshi

Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

My task is to explain to you as quickly as possible my essence, that is, what sort of man I am, what I believe in, and what I hope for, is that right? And therefore I declare that I accept God pure and simple. But this, however, needs to be noted: if God exists and if he indeed created the earth, then, as we know perfectly well, he created it in accordance with Euclidean geometry, and he created human reason with a conception of only three dimensions of space. At the same time there were and are even now geometers and philosophers, even some of the most outstanding among them, who doubt that the whole universe, or, even more broadly, the whole of being, was created purely in accordance with Euclidean geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid cannot possibly meet on earth, may perhaps meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear, have come to the conclusion that if I cannot understand even that, then it is not for me to understand about God. I humbly confess that I do not have any ability to resolve such questions, I have a Euclidean mind, an earthly mind, and therefore it is not for us to resolve things that are not of this world. And I advise you never to think about it, Alyosha my friend, and most especially about whether God exists or not. All such questions are completely unsuitable to a mind created with a concept of only three dimensions. And so, I accept God, not only willingly, but moreover I also accept his wisdom and his purpose, ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The exaltation of human reason and its capabilities, a commitment to rigorous and rational debate, a promotion of intellectual inquiry and scholarly exchange
all sponsored by the Church
provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution. ~ Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Human reason grows rich by self-conquest. ~ Publilius Syrus

A person employs human reason and intellect to guide our earthly expedition. We can stumble through life satisfying the unconscious dictates of the mind or take control of our life by increasing our level of conscious awareness. Philosophy always commences with an act of consciousness. We must follow our moral passions. We create our reality by what we perceive as truth. We imagine a life that we wish to experience. Live the life that you envision. Do not allow other people or external determinates to control your conception of the self, because otherwise you are living someone else's life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

If it be true that there can be no metaphysics transcending human reason, it is no less true that there can be no empirical knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure of cognition. ~ C. G. Jung

The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

For human reason, without any instigations imputable to the mere vanity of great knowledge, unceasingly progresses, urged on by its own feeling of need, towards such questions as cannot be answered by any empirical application of reason, or principles derived therefrom; and so there has ever really existed in every man some system of metaphysics. ~ Immanuel Kant

Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate. ~ Thomas Mann