Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.

Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.

It is true the orator may make a myriad replica of his own passion out of those who listen to him. But that does not prove he is right or they are not fools.

Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster.

We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we apeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational.

The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.

Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available

Logic never attracts men to the point of carrying them away.

The dominance of conclusions over arguments is most pronounced where emotions are involved.

The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian

If passion rules, how weak does reason prove!

Where can I find a man governed by reason instead of habits and urges?

The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

When you need to make a decision, don't let your emotions vote.

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his service unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.

You cannot mix up sentiment and reason.

Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence.

Hate and love are essentially the same in that the person who loves is as easily manipulated as a person who hates

Passion often makes a fool of the cleverest man and often makes the most foolish men clever

...you may be able to sway people's heads. But you can't sway their hearts.

Hence reason also demands that, since our thoughts cannot all be true because we are not wholly perfect, what truth they do possess must inevitably be found in the thoughts we have when awake, rather than in our dreams.

Of all the passions, fear weakens judgment most.

As the growing emphasis on feelings crowds out reason, facts will play a smaller role in public discourse.

Algaliarept varied its shape, sifting through my mind without me even knowing to choose what scared me the most. Once it had been Ivy. Then Kisten —until I had pinned him in an elevator in a foolish moment of vampire-induced passion. It's hard to be scared of someone after you've French-kissed him.

Just in ratio as knowledge increases, faith diminishes.