reason

January 7, 2013 by kevinstilley

Reason and Reasoning – select quotes

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
~ William Drummond of Hawthornden, in Academic Questions

To generalize is to be an idiot.
~ William Blake

Reason is the mistress and queen of all things.
~ Cicero, Tusculanarum Disputationum, 2.21

We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
~ Samuel Johnson, Letter to Boswell

The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.
~ Proverbs 18:17 (NIV)

All the tools with which mankind works upon its fate are dull, but the sharpest among them is reason.
~ Carl Van Doren, in Many Minds

Women are unreasonable; ask any man.
~ Unknown

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John Donne – select quotes

Reason is our Soules left hand,
Faith is her right, …

No man is an Iland intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is thelesse, as well as if a promontorie were, as well as if a mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
~ in Devotions

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

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Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captive, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except your ravish me
~ Sonnet no. 14

January 9, 2012 by kevinstilley

Faith and Reason – select quotes

Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul.
~ Aristotle

No one indeed believes anything unless he has first thought that it it to be believed.
~ Augustine of Hippo

God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.
~ Augustine of Hippo

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep faith alive and moving.
~ Frederick Buechner

A comprehended God is no God.
~ Dio Chrysostom

If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.
~ Denis Diderot, in A Philosophical Conversation

Reason is our Soules left hand, Faith is her right, …
~ John Donne

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because hey manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions; the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.
~ Steve Eley

The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.
~ T.S. Eliot, in his Introduction to Pascal’s Pensees

I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use.
~ Galileo Galilei

Proof is only applicable to very rarefied areas of philosophy and mathematics…. For the most part we are driven to acting on good evidence, without the luxury of proof. There is good evidence of the link between cause and effect. There is good evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow. There is good reason to believe my mother loves me and is not just fattening me up for the moment when she will pop arsenic into my tea. And there is good reason to believe in God. Very good reason. Not conclusive proof, but very good reason just the same…. I believe it is much harder to reject the existence of a supreme being than accept it.
~ Michael Green, in Faith for the Non-religious

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
~ Ralph Hodgson

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
~ David Hume, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Concerning Human Understanding

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
~ Robert Jastrow, in God and the Astronomer

The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust Him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more childlike will be our faith.
~ J. Gresham Machen

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration—courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth.
~ H. L. Menken

The faith that does not come from reason is to be doubted, and the reason that does not lead to faith is to be feared,
~ G. Campbell Morgan

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.
~ Blaise Pascal

Faith is reason at rest in God.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

God cannot be understood by logical reasoning but only by submission.
~ Leo Tolstoy, in Wise Thoughts for Every Day

It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being. Religion is as necessary to reason, as reason is to religion.
~ George Washington

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Books on Faith & Reason

April 18, 2011 by kevinstilley

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard – select quotes

He who is not alone with God’s word is not reading God’s word.
~ in For Self-Examination

If it is true that you know how to describe faith, it only proves that you are a poet, and if you can do it well, it proves that you are a good poet; but this is far from proving that you are a believer. Perhaps you can also weep in describing faith, that would prove then that you are a good actor.
~ in For Self-Examination

It is my joy that the female sex, far from being more imperfect than man, is on the contrary the most perfect.
~ in Stages on Life’s Way

Longbridge gets its name from its length, for as a bridge it is long, though as a road the length of the bridge is not very considerable, of which one can convince oneself by crossing it.
~ Quidam, in Soren Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way

A poet is an unhappy creature whose heart is tortured by deepest suffering but whose lips are so formed that when his sighs and cries stream out over them, their sound beomes like the sound of beautiful music . . . . And men flock about the poet saying, “Sing for us soon again; that is to say, may new sufferings torture your soul, and may your lips continue to be formed as before.
~ quoted by Madeleine L’Engle, in A Circle of Quiet (NY: Harper, 1972), page 53

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful, you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.

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Literary Influence on Soren Kierkegaard

Philosophy In The Comics

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Soren Kierkegaard, & C.S. Lewis

September 22, 2008 by kevinstilley

Reason Without Resources

Stranded island While on a sea cruise your ship sinks and you are stranded on a deserted island. With you are three intellectual atheists. They are not just atheists, but militant atheists. You do not have a Bible or any other references. What would be your strategy for sharing with them the reason for the hope that is within you?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

June 6, 2008 by kevinstilley

Thomas Paine – Select Quotes

Thomas Paine Time makes more Converts than Reason.
~ in Common Sense

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of men and women.
~ in The American Crisis

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect the conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.
~ in Common Sense

God is almost forgotten in the Christian religion. Everything, even the creation, is ascribed to the son of Mary.

What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
~ in The Age of Reason

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself that this thing called Christianity.
~ in The Age of Reason

Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.
~ in the Rights of Man

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

That government is best which governs least.

The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.

March 2, 2008 by kevinstilley

George Santayana – Select Quotes

To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other’s looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions. To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood.

Fanaticism consist in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
~ in The Life of Reason

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
~ in The Life of Reason

History is alway written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.
~ in The Life of Reason

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

Love makes us poets and the approach of death should make us philosophers.

March 2, 2008 by kevinstilley

Aristotle – select quotes

But he who is unable to live in society, or who has not need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
~ In Politics, bk. I, ch. 2, 1253a

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
~ In Politics

That which has become habitual becomes, as it were, a part of our nature; in fact, habit is something like nature, for the difference between “often” and “always” is not great, and nature belongs tot he idea of “always,” habit to that of “often.”
~ in Rhetorica 1.11

All art, all education, can be merely a supplement to nature.

Every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.

One who throws a stone has power over it until he has thrown it, but not afterwards.

Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul.

Anybody can become angry — that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises to give even his life- knowing that under certain conditions it is not worth while to live.