A Quote by Ken Kesey

There's shames a man can never reason away, though he looks back and piles up reasons over them forty dozen deep. And maybe those are the shames a man never should reason away.

Ken Kesey

Quote Topics

Away Back Deep Dozen Forty Looks Man Maybe Never Over Piles Reason Reasons Should Them Those Though Up

Quote Author

Ken Kesey
American - Novelist
September 17, 1935 - November 10, 2001

Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment.

Plutarch

The high-minded man is fond of conferring benefits, but it shames him to receive them.

Aristotle

Why does anyone lie? 'Cause we're scared or crazy, maybe just because we're mean. I guess there's a million reason to lie, and I might've told that many...but none like that. I guess there's always that one lie we never get over. What? Oh, maybe you don't know about it yet. Maybe you never tell a lie so big it can eat away a part of you. But if you ever do...and if you get lucky...you might a chance to set it right. Just one chance to change it. Then it's gone. And it never comes back again.

Billie Letts

Reason has never really directed social reality, but now reason has been so thoroughly purged of any specific trend or preference that it has finally renounced even the task of passing judgment on man's actions and way of life. Reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the conflicting interests to which our world actually seems abandoned.

Max Horkheimer

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason. Let us be like the man of the frontier and always reveal with utmost honesty our real reasons for all that we do.

J. P. Morgan

Nothing ever guarantees you anything-that's my rule. My other rule is never believe anything that anyone tells you, and then you'll never be fooled. It's not as cynical as it sounds; it's just that people always say something for a reason-maybe a nice reason, maybe a devious reason-so on that level, you can't take things at face value.

David Hyde Pierce

The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.

Joseph Addison

A man seems never to know what anything means till he has lost it; and this I suppose is the reason why losses--vanishing away of things--are among the teachings of this world of shadows.

Orville Dewey

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.

Benjamin Disraeli

One should be willing to throw away a dozen ideas to come up with a good one, just as one should throw away a dozen words to come up with the right one.

James Gunn

The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.

William James

. . .nature is still predominant, and there are those who regret that with the improvements of cultivation the sublimity of the wilderness should pass away: for those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature has never been lifted, affect the mind with a more deep toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched. Amid them the consequent associations are of God the creator-they are his undefiled works, and the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal things.

Thomas Cole

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.

J. P. Morgan

What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.