John Dewey Quotes

Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.

I think most people are more susceptible to prejudice than to reason.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

Logic is one thing, the human animal another. You can quite easily propose a logical solution to something and at the same time hope in your heart of hearts it won't work out.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

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

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.

Irrational passions would seem to be as much a part of human nature as is reason.

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches.

You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp itsseat, and rule in its stead.

Fear is the most powerful enemy of reason.

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

The intellect is always fooled by the heart.

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

Emotions have taught mankind to reason.

To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.

Could that have been what happened to the human race - a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years?

Emotion is a rotten base for politics.

We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature is so constituted.

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!

Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.