Reasonable Quotes - Page 17

• Nature is neither reasonable nor just. Nature is exact.

  Beah Richards

  Loss, Disaster

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• The test of science is not whether you are reasonable—there would not be much of physics if that was the case—the test is whether it works. And the great point about Newton’s theory of gravitation was that it worked, that you could actually say something about the motion of the moon without knowing very much about the constitution of the Earth.

  Hermann Bondi

  Moon, Knowing, Earth

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• I would inquire of reasonable persons whether this principle: Matter is naturally wholly incapable of thought, and this other: I think, therefore I am, are in fact the same in the mind of
  Descartes, and in that of St. Augustine, who said the same thing twelve hundred years before.

  Blaise Pascal

  Thinking, Years, Mind

  Blaise Pascal, Henry Rogers, Victor Cousin, Charles Louandre (1859). “The Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal”, p.510

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• We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to government founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Men, Jail

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.265, Bantam Classics

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• If you look at the world's top 50 drugs being sold today, they are being marketed and sold by companies that did not invent them. I respect patents. I'll pay a royalty. But I shouldn't be denied the right to produce drugs for poor people at reasonable prices.

  Yusuf Hamied

  People, Drug, Patents

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• What will most certainly happen is that there will be very clear and full communication between the government and independents and minor parties. The precise mechanisms will evolve over time, but we certainly intend to keep the minor parties and the independents very much in the loop. We have to if we want our legislative agenda to have a reasonable chance of success and that's what we intend to do.

  Tony Abbott

  Party, Communication, Government

  "Grattan on Friday: In Conversation with Tony Abbott". Interview with Michelle Grattan, theconversation.com. March 27, 2014.

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• A reasonable agriculture would do its best to emulate nature. Rather than change the earth to suit a crop... it would diversify its crops to suit the earth

  Verlyn Klinkenborg

  Inspirational, Motivational, Agriculture

  Verlyn Klinkenborg (2013). “More Scenes from the Rural Life”, p.109, Princeton Architectural Press

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• The goals of development are always and everywhere stated in terms of consumer value packages standardized around the North Atlantic-and therefore always and everywhere imply more privileges for a few... Underdevelopment is the result of a state of mind common to both socialist and capitalist countries. Present development goals are neither desirable nor reasonable. Unfortunately antiimperialism is no antidote.

  Ivan Illich

  Country, Goal, Mind

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• It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Writing, Heart, Character

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• We've done a lot of work with our government businesses to ensure that we can get reasonable returns but at the same time that they can provide the services that they do provide to Tasmanians at the most efficient cost.

  Peter Gutwein

  Government, Cost, Done

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• Is there any indication we shouldn't be depressed - are you living on the same planet that I am? Do you ever think that depression might be the reasonable human response to the crap we're going through as a species, meant to propel us into the next evolutionary step, or at least into taking some different course of action so we might survive? Do you ever think that maybe it's the happy people that are really screwed up in the head?

  Marc Maron

  Funny, Humor, Thinking

  "Marc Maron - Bipolar Coaster". "Comedy Central Presents", Season 11, Episode 1, www.cc.com. January 12, 2007.

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• You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.

  Aaron Levie

  Crazy, Ecosystems, Want

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• I certainly felt I had an idea of World War II, and it's probably the idea that many people share: there was this insane aggressor, and there was really only one way to proceed in resisting him. What I didn't realize is that there were many voices belonging to reasonable, interesting, complicated people who had a different way of interpreting the possible responses to the Hitlerian menace.

  Nicholson Baker

  War, Ideas, Voice

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• Properly conducted scientific studies . . . give us a pretty good idea of when something is likely to be correct. To me, pretty good is a linguistic statistic that falls somewhere in between more likely than not and beyond a reasonable doubt, et avoides the pitfalls arising from the belief in complete objectivity.

  Robert A. Burton

  Fall, Humility, Objectivity

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• A lawyer once told a jury that the person his client stood accused of having killed was about to walk through the courtroom door. When the jurors looked startled, the lawyer asserted that if those jurors had wondered, even for one second that the victim might appear, that belief constituted enough reasonable doubt for them to find his client innocent.

  John Adams

  Doors, Law, Doubt

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• To trust arms in the hands of the people at large has, in Europe, been believed...to be an experiment fraught only with danger. Here by a long trial it has been proved to be perfectly harmless...If the government be equitable; if it be reasonable in its exactions; if proper attention be paid to the education of children in knowledge and religion, few men will be disposed to use arms, unless for their amusement, and for the defense of themselves and their country.

  Timothy Dwight V

  Country, Children, Gun

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• How can we encourage other human beings to extend their moral sympathies beyond a narrow locus? How can we learn to become mere human beings, shorn of any more compelling national, ethnic, or religious identity? We can be reasonable. It is in the very nature of reason to fuse cognitive and moral horizons. Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love.

  Sam Harris

  Love, Religious, Identity

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.190, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy - and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational

  Steve Allen

  Religious, Philosophy, Commitment

  Steve Allen (1996). “But Seriously--: Steve Allen Speaks His Mind”

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• A reasonable being might think that he and I could find some common ground; have a cup of coffee and compare our Passengers, exchange trade talk and chitchat about dismemberment techniques. But no: Doakes wanted me dead. And I found it difficult to share his point of view.

  Jeff Lindsay

  Coffee, Thinking, Views

  Jeff Lindsay (2005). “Dearly Devoted Dexter”, p.6, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.

  Sam Harris

  World, Claims

  "Science Must Destroy Religion" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 2, 2006.

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• [I]t being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a Wolf or a lion.

  John Locke

  War, Men, Should Have

  John Locke (1956). “The Second Treatise of Government: (An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government), And, A Letter Concerning Toleration”, p.20, Library of Alexandria

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• Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio, passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.

  John Locke

  Children, Philosophical, Reading

  "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" by John Locke, (Sec. 81), 1693.

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• ...we are entitled to make almost any reasonable assumption, but should resist making conclusions until evidence requires that we do so.

  Steve Allen

  Religion, Assumption, Should

  Steve Allen (1998). “Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking : with 101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve Your Mind”

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• We live in a world where virtually everybody expects there's going to be some reasonable therapy for virtually any situation.

  Dean Kamen

  World, Situation, Therapy

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. June 9, 2009.

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• A proof is that which convinces a reasonable man; a rigorous proof is that which convinces an unreasonable man.

  Mark Kac

  Men, Proof, Unreasonable

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