Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

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

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

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

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 passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.

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

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

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.

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!

Those who see and observe kings, heroes, and statesmen, discover that they have headaches, indigestion, humors and passions, just like other people; every one of which in their turns determine their wills in defiance of their reason.

Everyone had a reason for everything they did, even if that reason was sometimes stupidity.

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

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

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

In all human affairs, the wisest course is to be passionate about the role of reason and reasonable about the role of passion.

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

We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.

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

Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.

And, speaking generally, passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.

People in this world are not often logical.

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.

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.

When reason ends, then anger begins. Therefore, anger is a sign of weakness.

Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman.