A Quote by John Ralston Saul

We have more than two options. A critique of reason does not have to be a call for the return of superstition and arbitrary power. Our problems do not lie with reason itself but with our obsessive treatment of reason as an absolute value. Certainly it is one of our qualities, but it functions positively only when balanced and limited by the others.

John Ralston Saul

Quote Topics

Absolute Arbitrary Arbitrary Power Balanced Call Certainly Critique Does Functions Itself Lie Limited More Obsessive Only Options Others Our Positively Power Problems Qualities Reason Return Superstition Than Treatment Two Two Options Value

Quote Author

John Ralston Saul
Canadian - Author
Born: June 19, 1947

I also came to see that liberalism's superficial optimism concerning human nature caused it to overlook the fact that reason is darkened by sin. The more I thought about human nature the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin causes us to use our minds to rationalize our actions. Liberalism failed to see that reason by itself is little more than an instrument to justify man's defensive ways of thinking. Reason, devoid of the purifying power of faith, can never free itself from distortions and rationalizations.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.

Umberto Eco

If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.

Blaise Pascal

To get any reason out of the mass of incongruity we call human life, we have to transcend our reason, but we must do it scientifically, slowly, by regular practice, and we must cast off all superstition.

Swami Vivekananda

If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We cannot safely assume that other people's minds work on the same principles as our own. All too often, others with whom we come in contact do not reason as we reason, or do not value the things we value, or are not interested in what interests us.

Isabel Briggs Myers

Reason shows us our duty; he who can make us love our duty is more powerful than reason itself.

Stanislaw I Leszczynski

You can see a lot about our mission on our website, but the basic idea is that the church believes that understanding human beings and the Earth requires not only faith but also reason, and not only philosophical reason but also scientific reason.

Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo

The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists exists; what is is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality–it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see." -Richard

Terry Goodkind

There is no reason we shouldn't be granting access to every available treatment for our veterans when they've already exhausted other options.

Tommy Tuberville

The claim is also sometimes made that science is as arbitrary or irrational as all other claims to knowledge, or that reason itself is an illusion. As Ethan Allen said Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are labouring to dethrone. If they argue without reason, which they must do, in order to be consistent with themselves, they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.

Carl Sagan

The scarcest resource these days is reason. What's certainly striking about American culture today is the great hostility toward science and the decline of respect for rational scientific thinking. People seem to think that we are ruled by the scientific method and that we overvalue reason. If there was ever a period when we overvalued reason, I think that it was probably extremely brief. What I see now is a great deal of superstition, as much superstition as there has ever been. There are probably more people who believe in guardian angels than who understand the law of gravity.

Wendy Kaminer

There are two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. The supreme achievement of reason is to realise that there is a limit to reason. Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realise that.

Blaise Pascal

Pity on the person who has become accustomed to seeing in necessity something arbitrary, who ascribes to the arbitrary some sort of reason, and even claims that following that sort of reason has religious value.