Anthony Daniels Quotes

Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or that a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.

[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will.

Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?

Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.

A man's acts are usually right, but his reasons seldom are.

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion.

Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.

To discover the true principles of Morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods: They have need only of common sense.

I think that unless you can take judgments of right and wrong like an automaton, you must have emotions because that is our only way of moral guidance.

There is no rational creature which is not capable both of good and evil

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 human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other.

My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.

Conscience is what? It is putting together a moral act and a moral ideal, and measuring the act by the ideal. It is putting this moral act which you do alongside the eternal laws of God, and seeing how it stands by those laws of God.

Reason is the shepherd trying to corral life's vast flock of wild irrationalities.

As the mind of each man is conscious of good or evil, so does he conceive within his breast hope or fear, according to his actions.

When, in the present world, men behave well, that is no doubt sometimes because they are creatures of habit as well as, sometimes, because they are reasonable.

Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.

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

Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice-and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice; he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

He is next to the gods whom reason, and not passion, impels; and who, after weighing the facts, can measure the punishment with discretion.

Man is able to decide for or against reason, he is able to create beyond reason or to destroy below reason

The establishment uses that rationale all the time, and that's why we do what we do. But leadership requires some understanding that you can say no. People have base instincts, but the transcendent also appeal to them.