reason

We may not yet know the right way to go, but we should at least stop going in the wrong direction.

She was in awe of all his work. 'How do you do it?" she asked.He smiled and said, 'By loving you.

Resources are hired to give results, not reasons.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

Art forms that appeal to [leftists] tend to focus on ... defeat and despair ... as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation.

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.

Naive people tend to generalize people as_-good, bad, kind, or evil based on their actions. However, even the smartest person in the world is not the wisest or the most spiritual, in all matters. We are all flawed. Maybe, you didn__ know a few of these things about Einstein, but it puts the notion of perfection to rest. Perfection doesn__ exist in anyone. Nor, does a person__ mistakes make them less valuable to the world. 1. He divorced the mother of his children, which caused Mileva, his wife, to have a break down and be hospitalized.2.He was a ladies man and was known to have had several affairs; infidelity was listed as a reason for his divorce.3.He married his cousin.4.He had an estranged relationship with his son.5. He had his first child out of wedlock.6. He urged the FDR to build the Atom bomb, which killed thousands of people.7. He was Jewish, yet he made many arguments for the possibility of God. Yet, hypocritically he did not believe in the Jewish God or Christianity. He stated, __ believe in Spinoza__ God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people__ beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence.But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow__ holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one__ own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence.And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence.Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters _ methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence _ such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods _ astronomy, geology and history, for instance _ they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe?Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people__ intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts _ whose assertions frequently contradict one another _ are in fact sacred?

People who praise a leader even when he is doing the wrong things are the main reasons why his fall is near.

Question like a child, reason like an adult, and write like a sage.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends.The lunatic, the lover and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.

WHAT IS TRUTH?Truth is not a thingOr a concept.It is as multidimensionalIn its meaningAs it is in its reflection.It is both invisibleAnd visible.It carries tons of weight,But can be carried.It is understood first through the spiritBefore science,And felt in the heart,Before the mind.Truth is not always heard by reason,Because reason sometimesIgnores Truth.Always listen to your conscience.Your conscience is your heartAnd reason is your mind.Your mind is simply there to reasonWith your heart.But remember,Truth is in your heart,And only through your heartCan you connect to the light of God.He who is not motivated by his heartWill not see Truth,And he who thinks only with his mindWill be blind to Truth.He who does not thinkWith his conscience,Does not stand by God,For the language of lightCan only be decoded by the heart.He who reads and recites words of GodAlso does not stand by God __f he merely understandsWords with his mindBut not his heart.Truth is black and white,And the entire spectrumOf colors in-between.It can have many parts,But has a solid foundation.Truth lacks perfection,For it is the reflection of all,Yet its reflection as a whole,Is more beautifulThan the accumulated flawsOf the small.Truth is the only brandWorth breathingAnd believing.So stand for truthIn everything you do,And only thenDoes your life haveMeaning.Poetry by Suzy Kassem

Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.

If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.

Love, the exotic bird, came and went.Heart forgot love.Joy, the majestic willow, wept and died.Mind forgot joy.Hope, the basement lamp, fell and broke.Soul forgot hope.Self, the anxious caterpillar, took flight and dropped.Self forgot self.You, my all, became all my reasons.Reasons left.You left.I never forgot.

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

Skepticism is thus a resting-place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds itself, so that for the future it may be able to choose its path with more certainty. But it is no dwelling-place for permanent settlement. Such can be obtained only through perfect certainty in our knowledge, alike of the objects themselves and of the limits within which all our knowledge of objects is enclosed.

Were we incapable of empathy _ of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their suffering is like our own _ then ethical reasoning would lead nowhere. If emotion without reason is blind, then reason without emotion is impotent.