Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas.

Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason.

Passions are generally roused from great conflict.

Of all the passions, fear weakens judgment most.

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason. Events which excite those feelings will produce wonderful effects.

Argument [is] useless against a people in a passion, convinced of their own injuries.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting …

The fact that a man is driven back on feelings and instincts to justify an action or course of action which he has thought over and discussed, is good evidence that what he calls his feelings and instincts are at variance with his better judgment … and may therefore be worthless or dangerous guides in any wider matter involving the fate of his country or his fellow-countrymen.

We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.

In what depends on the known or the regular course of nature, the mind trusts to itself; but in strange and uncommon situations, it is the dupe of its own perplexity, and, instead of relying on its prudence or courage, has recourse to divination, and a variety of observances, that, for being irrational, are always the more revered.

Nothing is more fallacious than to expect to produce any valuable or permanent results in political projects by relying merely on the reason of men. Men are ... for the most part governed by the impulses of passion.

The condition of our survival in any but the meagerest existence is our willingness to accommodate ourselves to the conflicting interests of others, to learn to live in a social world.

Nations, like individuals, never condescend to stop and examine how far the arguments and feelings of their opponents may be reasonable and just; and it follows from hence, that men of rank and influence in our community can never be better employed than in prevailing on their countrymen to pause and reflect: to remember that in every quarrel there must necessarily be two sides, and that it would be a marvelous circumstance indeed, if the one side, i. e. themselves, were exclusively in the right.

When a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded.

Since when was an emotional argument won by logic?

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals for the most part governed by the impulse of passion. This is a truth well understood by our adversaries who have practised upon it with no small benefit to their cause. For at the very moment they are eulogizing the reason of men & professing to appeal only to that faculty, they are courting the strongest & most active passion of the human heart - VANITY!

Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions.

Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions.

Passion paralyzes good taste.

The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.

The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.

But common sense has no place in first love and never has.

Mankind will not be reasoned out of the feelings of humanity.