Fulke Greville Quotes

Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.

To be rational is so glorious a thing, that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title.

Man is a reasoning Animal.

Reason is the glory of human nature, and one of the chief eminences whereby we are raised above our fellow-creatures, the brutes, in this lower world.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.

Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human mind; Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.

Being so rational, we have created a very simple version of ourselves.

Suppose, gentleman, that man is not stupid.

The life of sense begins by assuming that we can only fitfully live the life of reason.

Because reason...is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us.

Let him make use of instinct who cannot make use of reason.

All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.

I'm not an analytical person, so it's not my job to even know what the hell the thing meant. It's not my problem. I'm just supposed to do it. Sometimes, people have explained things to me that I might have been semi-conscious of or not.

You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

The world is full of smart, poor people.

Still, obviously, one can't be sensible all the time.

The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service.

Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

A stupid man behaves stupidly, not because he wants to, or tries to, or is motivated to, but simply because he is what he is.

Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.

Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man's mental or moral economy.