This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"With regard to marriage, it is plain that it is in accordance with reason, if the desire of connection is engendered not merely by external form, but by a love of begetting children and wisely educating them; and if, in addition, the love both of the husband and wife has for its cause not external form merely, but chiefly liberty of mind." -
"Each successive generation plunges into the abyss of passion, without the slightest regard to the fatal effects which such conduct has produced upon their predecessors; and lament, when too late, the rashness with which they slighted the advice of experience, and stifled the voice of reason." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
"Whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed." - Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
"How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices." - Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
"Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most sever bridle of the tongue... Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissolution of the tongue." - Jeremy Taylor
"Temperance is reason’s girdle and passions’ bridle, the strength of the soul and the foundation of virtue." - Jeremy Taylor
"Man’s free will differs from every other force in that man is directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation, electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one another in that they are differently defined by reason." -
"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The highest wisdom has but one science - the science of the whole - the science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it. To receive that science it is necessary to purity and renew one’s inner self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to perfect one’s self. And to attain this end, we have the light called conscinece tht God has implanted in our souls." -
"Even granting the author [Rutherford]... his main principle, ‘That every man’s own happiness is the ultimate end, which nature and reason teach him to pursue’, why may not nature and reason teach him, too, to have some desire to see others happy as well as himself, or give him some delight in doing what seems fit and right, if these things do not interfere with his own happiness?... Why may he not, with the pursuit of that end, join some other pursuits not inconsistent with it, instead of transforming every benevolent affection, every moral view, into self-interest? This surely neither does honour to religion, nor justice to human nature." - Catharine Trotter Cockburn
"The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth." - Henry Theodore Tuckerman
"Since the mind is a specific biocomputer, it needs specific instructions and directions. The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, learn about them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them." -
"The reason that many men want their desires is because their desires want reason. He may do what he will that will do but what he may." - Arthur Warwick
"In our thinking we must preserve an open and enquiring mind, an ability to see things through the eyes of our opponents, a skill for understanding the motives and thoughts of those whom we oppose. Yet we must act in the light of the best knowledge and reason available to us at the moment." - Carleton Washburne
"Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason. It is our part, by religion and reason joined, to counteract them all we can." - John Wesley
"Do you want to know the man against whom you have most reason to guard yourself? Your looking-glass will give you a very fair likeness of his face." - Richard Whately
"When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. the future is yet in your power." - Hugh Lawson White
"True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason." - Paul Whitehead
"Common opinions often conflict with common sense; for reason in most minds is no match for prejudices, a hydra whose heads grow faster than they can be cut off." - Edward Wigglesworth
"Freedom springs from within, whether in a man or in a people. To remove disabilities and confer the franchise is not enough. Men must be enabled to grow if they are to exercise their rights with dignity and effect. For this reason the widening of the franchise in democratic countries has always been accompanied or followed by the development of popular education." - Basil Alfred Yeaxlee
"There is a single reason why 99 out of 100 average business men never become leaders. That is their unwillingness to pay the price of responsibility. By the price of responsibility I mean hard driving, continual work... the courage to make decisions, to stand the gaff... the scourging honesty of never fooling yourself about yourself... And the grooves that lead to the heights are not made between nine and five. They are burned in by the midnight oil." - Owen D. Young
"The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may listen the more and talk the less." - Zeno of Citium NULL
"Congress is a very unrepresentative institution. Not only from an economic class point of view, but from every point of view - sex, race, age, vocation... These men in Congress don’t represent a homogeneous point of view. They represent their own point of view - by reason of their sex, background and class." - Bella Abzug
"One reason why men and women lose their heads so often is that they use them so little!... The more the mind is used the more flexible it becomes, and the more it takes upon itself new interests." - George Matthew Adams
"Man is a creature of impulse, emotion, action rather than reason. Reason is a very late development in the world of living creatures, most of whom, as far as we know, get along admirably in daily life without it." - James R. Adams
"Intellectual and spiritual leaders hailed the cause of civil rights and gave little thought to where the civil disobedience road might end. But defiance of the law, even for the best reasons, opens a tiny hole in the dike and soon a trickle becomes a flood... And while no thinking person denies that social injustice exits, no thinking person can condone any group, for any reason, taking justice into his own hands. Once this is permitted, democracy dies; for democracy is sustained through one great premise: the premise that civil rights are balanced by civil responsibilities." - Spiro T. Agnew, fully Spiro Theodore Agnew
"The whole secret of remaining young in spite of years, and even of gray hairs, is to cherish enthusiasm in oneself, by poetry, by contemplation, by charity, - that is, in fewer words, the maintenance of harmony in the soul. When everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in its right place within us, we ourselves are in equilibrium with the whole work of God. Deep and grave enthusiasm for the eternal beauty and the eternal order, reason touched with emotion and a serene tenderness of heart - these surely are the foundations of wisdom." -
"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"One universe made up of all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of being, and one law, the reason shared by all thinking creatures, and one truth." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"This is a property of the rational soul, love of one’s neighbor, and truth and modesty, and to value nothing more than itself, which is also the property of Law. Thus then right reason differs not at all from the reason of justice." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"Reason would not have us grieve for the dead, who are set free from evil, but all men do grieve over them, because they think of themselves and of their own advantage." - Apocrypha NULL
"A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people, shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it." - François Arago, fully François Jean Dominique Arago
"The reason so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know something." - Walter Bagehot
"It is easier to be a lover that a husband for the simpler reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day that to say pretty things from time to time." - Honoré de Balzac
"The proper work of man, the grand drift of human life is to follow reason, that noble spark kindled in us from heaven." - Isaac Barrow
"Common sense is nature’s gift, but reason is an art." - James Beattie
"We look at change but we do not see it. We speak of change, but we do not think about it. We say that change exists, that everything changes, that change is the very law of things: yes, we say it and we repeat it; but those are only words, and we reason and philosophize as though change did not exist." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
"Habits - the only reason they persist is that they are offering some satisfaction. You allow them to persist by not seeking any other, better form of satisfying the same needs. Every habit, good or bad, is acquired and learned in the same way - by finding that it is a means of satisfaction." - Juliene Berk
"Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." - Bible or The Bible or Holy Bible NULL
"Energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy. Energy is eternal delight." - William Blake
"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason, and Energy, Love and hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell." - William Blake
"Providence is the very divine reason which arranges all things, and rests with the supreme disposer of all; while fate is that ordering which is a part of all changeable things, and by means of which Providence binds all things together in their own order. Providence embraces all things equally, however different they may be, even however infinite: when they are assigned to their own places, forms, and times, Fate sets them in an orderly motion; so that this development of the temporal order, unified in the intelligence of the mind of God, is Providence. The working of this unified development in time is called Fate. These are different, but the one hangs upon the other. For this order, which is ruled by Fate, emanates from the directness of Providence." - Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
"That God is eternal, is agreed by all who possess reason. What then is eternity?... Eternity is the complete and simultaneous possession of endless life in a single whole... God lives ever in an eternal present, his knowledge transcends all movement of time, and abides in the indivisibility of his present; he grasps the past and the future in all their infinite extent, and with his indivisible cognition he contemplates all events as if they were even now taking place." - Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
"Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom; but the ultimate wisdom, which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls forth faith rather than reason." - Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland