Quotes to inspire and reflect

No one can go on being a rebel too long without turning into an autocrat.

When 1 refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

Rebel, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.

Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?

Reason in my philosophy is only a harmony among irrational impulses.

The seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground. And the pure logician, if no sun draws him forth, remains entangled in his logic.

Reason and happiness are like other flowers— they wither when plucked.

Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces ot unreason destroy one another in futile strife.

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.

Logic is one thing, the human animal another. You can quite easily propose a logical solution to something and at the same time hope in your heart of hearts it won’t work out.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; in disobeying the latter we are made unhappy, in disobeying the former, fools.

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.

Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme which we cannot escape.

Logic is the art of making truth prevail.

We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.

What eludes logic is the most precious element in us, and one can draw nothing from a syllogism that the mind has not put there in advance.

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

’Tis in vain to speak reason where ’twill not be heard.

Reason can wrestle / And overthrow terror.

Reason flies / When following the senses, on clipped wings.

The difference between the reason of man and the instinct of the beast is this, that the beast does but know, but the man knows that he knows.

More wisdom is latent in things-as-they-are than in all the words men use.

The mind resorts to reason for want of training.

You too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.

To mention a loved object, a person, or a place to someone else is to invest that object with reality.

What is actual is actual only for one time / And only for one place.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

You ride astride the imaginary in order to hunt down the real.

We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.

Intuition? Bosh! Women, in fact, are the supreme realists of the race.

Let us replace sentimentalism by realism, and dare to uncover those simple and terrible laws which, be they seen or unseen, pervade and govern.

There’s nothing people can’t contrive to praise or condemn and find justification for doing so, according to their age and their inclinations.

In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

We do what we can, and then make a theory to prove our performance the best.

The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.

If you leap into a well, Providence is not bound to fetch you out.

To call a king “Prince” is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.

It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.

The good Lord sees your heart, not the braid on your jacket, before Him we are all in our birthday suits, generals and common men alike.

There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

Bottom is bottom, even if it is turned upside down.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren t always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom.

Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.