Raison Quotes
More Raison Quotes
Il y a peu d'hommes qui se permettent un usage vigoureux et intrépide de leur raison, et osent l'appliquer à tous les objets dans toute sa force. Le tems est venu où il faut l'appliquer ainsi à tous les objets de la Morale, de la Politique et de la Société, aux rois, aux ministres, aux grands, aux philosophes, aux principes des Sciences, des Beaux-arts, etc., sans quoi, on restera dans la médiocrité.
nicolas chamfort— Few people are prepared to use their reason without fear or favor, or bold enough to apply it relentlessly to every moral, political and social issue: to kings and ministers, to men in high places … And if we don't, we're doomed to remain mediocre.Reflections
Heureux, qui comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage, Ou comme cestuy la' qui conquit la toison, Et puis est retourne , plein d'usage et raison, Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son a" ge! Happy is he who, like Ulysses, has taken a wondrous journey Or has won the Golden Fleece, And then returns home wise and useful To live in his homeland the rest of his days.
Joachim du Bellay— 1558 Les Regrets, no.31.
La sagesse n'est pas dans la raison, mais dans l'amour. Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.
— 1897 Les Nourritures terrestres, pt.1.
La langue est une raison humaine qui a ses raisons, et que l'homme ne conna|"t pas. Language is a form of human reason, and has its reasons which are unknown to man. See Pascal 641:23.
Claude Le vi-Strauss— 1962 La Pense e sauvage, ch.9.
Le c½ur a ses raisons, que la raison ne conna|"t point. The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Blaise Pascal— c.1654-1662 Pense es, no.277 (translated byA Krailsheimer).
Now, Stuart, as you will discover if you have not done so already, believes that the principal raison d'etre of food is to conceal from public view the hideous pattern on the plate beneath.
julian barnes— Page 28. (Talking It Over (1991))
Les sots, les ignorans, les gens malhonnêtes, vont prendre dans les livres des idées, de la raison, des sentimens nobles et élevés, comme une femme riche va chez un marchand d'étoffes s'assortir pour son argent.
nicolas chamfort— Maximes et Pensées, #572Foolish, ignorant and vicious persons go to books for their thoughts and judgments, and for all their elevated and noble sentiments, just as a rich woman goes with her money to a draper.Maxims and Considerations
Il y a une chose plus triste à perdre que la vie, c’est la raison de vivre,Plus triste que de perdre ses biens, c’est de perdre son espérance.
Paul Claudel— There is something sadder to lose than life – the reason for living;Sadder than to lose one's possessions is to lose one's hope.
— L'otage (Paris: Édition de la Nouvelle revue française, 1911) p. 162; Pierre Chavannes (trans.) The Hostage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917) p. 130.
Si l'ordre est le plaisir de la raison, le désordre est le délice de l'imagination.
Paul Claudel— Order is the pleasure of the reason; but disorder is the delight of the imagination.
— Le soulier de satin: ou, Le pire n'est pas toujours sûr (Paris: Gallimard, [1929] 1936) vol. 1, p. 12; John O'Connor (trans.) The Satin Slipper (London: Sheed & Ward, 1931) p. xxiii.
On ne peut réfléchir sur les precepts de la morale sans être étonné de les voir tout à la fois estimés et négligés; et l'on se demande la raison de cette bizarrerie du cœur humain, qui lui fait goûter des idées de bien et de perfection dont il s'éloigne dans la pratique.
antoine françois prévost— One cannot reflect for long on moral precepts without being astonished at seeing them, at one and the same time, revered and neglected, and without wondering what could be the reason for this vagary of the human heart, whereby it clings to principles of goodness and perfection from which it deviates in practice.
— Avis de l'auteur, pp. 30-31; translation p. 4.
We are the raison d'être of the entire system. We are also the employers of those in public office and in the public service. Why should we accept from them a discourse which suggests contempt for us and for the democratic system?
john ralston saul— "Criticism"
Futurism and Cubism are comparable in importance tot the invention of perspective, for which they substituted a new concept op space. All subsequent movements were latent in them or brought about by them... the two movements cannot be regarded as in opposition to each other, even though they started from opposite points; I maintain (an idea approved by Apollinaire and later by Matisse) that they are two extremes of the same sign, tending to coincide at certain points which only the poetic instinct of the painter can discover: poetry being the content and raison d’être of art.
gino severini— p. 248-249
Il est plus facile d'être amant que mari, par la raison qu'il est plus difficile d'avoir de l'esprit tous les jours que de dire de jolies choses de temps en temps.
honoré de balzac— It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time.Part I, Meditation V: Of the Predestined, aphorism LXIX
Mais la raison est toujours mesquine auprès du sentiment; l'une est naturellement bornée, comme tout ce qui est positif, et l'autre est infini.
honoré de balzac— But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.Ch. III: At Thirty Years
Tout ce qui plaît a une raison de plaire, et mépriser les attroupements de ceux qui s'égarent n'est pas le moyen de les ramener où ils devraient être.
Charles Baudelaire— Everything that gives pleasure has its reason. To scorn the mobs of those who go astray is not the means to bring them around."Quelques mots d'introduction," Salon de 1845 (May 1845) [1]
La raison et l'amour sont ennemis jurés.
pierre corneille— Reason and love are sworn enemies.La nourrice, La Veuve [The Widow], (1631), act II, scene III
Ma raison, il est vrai, dompte mes sentiments, Mais, quelque autorité que sur eux elle ait prise, Elle n'y règne pas, elle les tyrannise.
pierre corneille— My reason, it’s true, controls my feelings,
But whatever its authority,
It doesn’t rule them so much as tyrannize them.Pauline, act II, scene ii
Seigneur, si j'ai raison, qu'importe à qui je sois?
pierre corneille— Sir, what does it matter whom I serve, so long as I am right?Nicomède, act I, scene ii
Aucun homme n'a recu de la nature le droit de commander aux autres. La liberté est un présent du ciel, et chaque individu de la meme espèce a le droit d'en jouir aussitòt qu'il jouit de la raison.
Denis Diderot— No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.Article on Political Authority, Vol. 1, (1751) as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. CrockerVariant translation: No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.
andré gide— Les Nourritures Terrestres [Fruits of the Earth] (1897), book I
Il y a deux labyrinthes fameux où notre raison s’égare bien souvent:;: l'un regarde la grande question du libre et du nécessaire, surtout dans la production et dans l'origine du mal:;; l'autre consiste dans la discussion de la continuité et des indivisibles qui en paraissent les éléments, et où doit entrer la considération de l'infini.
gottfried leibniz— There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.Essais de Théodicée: Préface] (1710)
Or, comme il y a une infinité d'univers possibles dans les idées de Dieu, et qu'il n'en peut exister qu'un seul, il faut qu'il y ait une raison suffisante du choix de Dieu qui le détermine à l'un plutôt qu'à l'autre. Et cette raison ne peut se trouver que dans la convenance, dans les degrés de perfection que ces mondes contiennent, chaque possible ayant droit de prétendre à l'existence à mesure de la perfection qu'il enveloppe.
gottfried leibniz— Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves.La monadologie (53 & 54).
The "social contract," in the only sense in which it is not completely mythical, is a contract among conquerors, which loses its raison d'être if they are deprived of the benefits of conquest.
bertrand russell— Ch. 12: Powers and forms of governments.
The central fact for me is, I think, that the [role of the] intellectual... cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d'etre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.
edward said— Representations of the Intellectual (1994)
Il est dangereux d’avoir raison dans des choses où des hommes accrédités ont tort.
voltaire— It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong."Catalogue pour la plupart des écrivains français qui ont paru dans Le Siècle de Louis XIV, pour servir à l'histoire littéraire de ce temps," Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1752)Note: The most frequently attributed variant of this quote is: It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
La foi consiste à croire ce que la raison ne croit pas.
voltaire— Faith consists in believing what reason cannot."The Flood" (1764)
La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure.
— The reason of the strongest is always the best.
— Jean de La Fontaine, in Le loup et l'agneau
Notre raison est toujours déçue par l'inconstance des apparences.
— Our reason is always disappointed by the inconsistency of appearances.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1669), Section II The Misery of Man without God (60-183).
Futurism and Cubism are comparable in importance tot the invention of perspective, for which they substituted a new concept op space. All subsequent movements were latent in them or brought about by them.. ..the two movements cannot be regarded as in opposition to each other, even though they started from opposite points; I maintain (an idea approved by Apollinaire and later by Matisse ) that they are two extremes of the same sign, tending to coincide at certain points which only the poetic instinct of the painter can discover: poetry being the content and raison d’être of art.
— Gino Severini, as quoted in Letters of the great artists, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p. 248-249 (translation Daphne Woodward)
