Unreasoning Quotes & Sayings

How blind and unreasoning and arbitrary are some of the laws of nature - the most of them, in fact! — Mark Twain

This was ... This was sickeningly different. It was blind, unreasoning hate that just wanted blood and she didn't understand why. It left her feeling horrified and shaky. — Rachel Caine

Our hero's unreasoning rage was fed by a not unreasonable jealousy. It was clear to him that Zuleika had forgotten his existence. To-day, as soon as he had killed her love, she had shown him how much less to her was his love than the crowd's. And now again it was only the crowd she cared for. He followed with his eyes her long slender figure as she threaded her way in and out of the crowd, sinuously, confidingly, producing a penny from one lad's elbow, a threepenny-bit from between another's neck and collar, half a crown from another's hair, and always repeating in that flute-like voice of hers: Well, this is rather queer! — Max Beerbohm

A friend loves you for your intelligence, a mistress for your charm, but your family's love is unreasoning; you were born into it and are of its flesh and blood. Nevertheless it can irritate you more than any group of people in the world. — Andre Maurois

You're learning, friend.'
'The lessons of civilization.'
'Just so. There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious weed, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.'
'With words.'
'Indeedm with words. Form an opinion, say it ofren enough and pretty soon everyone's saying it right back at you, and then it becomes a conviction, fed by unreasoning anger and defended with a fight to the death. — Steven Erikson

As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it. — Mark Twain

Whoever is acquainted with the cruel injustice and unjust subordination frequently manifested in the family, whoever sees matters of lasting and supreme importance relative to the beginning and continuance of the family determined by momentary fancy or unreasoning passion, cannot but desire the construction of a social fabric in which reason may rule with perfect justice. — Charles Franklin Thwing

Compare King William with the philosopher Haeckel. The king is one of the anointed by the most high, as they claim - one upon whose head has been poured the divine petroleum of authority. Compare this king with Haeckel, who towers an intellectual colossus above the crowned mediocrity. Compare George Eliot with Queen Victoria. The Queen is clothed in garments given her by blind fortune and unreasoning chance, while George Eliot wears robes of glory woven in the loom of her own genius.
The world is beginning to pay homage to intellect, to genius, to heart.
We have advanced. We have reaped the benefit of every sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of every divine and brave act; and we should endeavor to hand the torch to the next generation, having added a little to the intensity and glory of the flame. — Robert G. Ingersoll

He had a strong conviction that no government could be ordained that could resist these internal forces, when, they are directed to its destruction by bad men, or unreasoning mobs, and many then believed, as some yet believe, that our government is unequal to such pressure, when the assault is thoroughly desperate. — Alexis De Tocqueville

(from John Hay's diary) "The President never appeared to better advantage in the world," Hay proudly noted in his diary. "Though He knows how immense is the danger to himself from the unreasoning anger of that committee, he never cringed to them for an instant. He stood where he thought he was right and crushed them with his candid logic. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

It cannot be said too often that actions are good or bad in the light of consequences, and that a clear perception of consequences would control actions. That which increases the sum of human happiness is moral; and that which diminishes the sum of human happiness is immoral ... Blind, unreasoning obedience is the enemy of morality. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith a desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will but faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity. — George F. Kennan

Genius, apart from natural sensitiveness, is prone equally to unreasoning joy and to bitterest morbidness. — Mary MacLane

It cannot be too strongly asserted that the insistence on blind, unreasoning faith is due mainly to the maintenance of a subject-matter upon which there was no knowledge, namely the 'other world'; and that this basis was assumed because of early man's preoccupation with death. It is, unfortunately, quite possible to believe a thing which is contradicted by facts, especially if the facts are not generally known; but if the whole position on which we rested our religions had been visibly opposed by what we did know, even the unthinking masses would, in time, have noticed it. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

All that is mere
rationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance
and terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but
denies there can be devils. The superstition is in the person who
admits there can be devils but denies there can be diabolists. — G.K. Chesterton

I don't blame you one iota for feeling as you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly feel just as you do.( ... ) You can say that and be 100 percent sincere, because if you were the other person you, of course, would feel just as he does ( ... ) Suppose you had inherited the same body and temperament and mind ( ... ) Suppose you had had his environment and experiences. You would then be precisely what he was - and where he was. For it is those things -and only those things - that made him what he was. ( ... ) You deserve very little credit for being what you are - and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are. — Dale Carnegie

He was invaded by an unreasoning calm, which he interpreted as an omen that nothing new was going to happen, that everything he had done in his life had been in vain, that he could not go on: it was the end. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In the love between a man and a woman there always comes a moment when this love has reached its zenith - a moment when it is unconscious, unreasoning, and with nothing sensual about it. — Leo Tolstoy

Boldwood, whose unreasoning devotion to Bathsheba could only be characterized as a fond madness which neither time nor circumstance, evil nor good report, could weaken or destroy. This fevered hope had grown up again like a grain of mustard-seed during the quiet which followed the hasty conjecture that Troy was drowned. He nourished it fearfully, and almost shunned the contemplation of it in earnest, lest facts should reveal the wildness of the dream. Bathsheba having at last been persuaded — Thomas Hardy

After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Hark ye yet again,--the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living act, the undoubted deed - there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. — Herman Melville

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed - there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of
its features from behind the unreasoning mask. — Herman Melville

Let me first assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. — William Manchester

Women are queer, unreasoning creatures, and are just as likely as not to love a man who has been throwing away his affection. — Elizabeth Gaskell

In the passage of their lives together every object in the garden, every item in the house, every word they spoke, attested to their mutual love, the combining of their humuours ... When the time came that Nora was alone most of the night and part of the day, she suffered from the personality of the house, the punishment of those who collect their lives together. Unconsciously at first, she went about disturbing nothing; then she became aware that her soft and careful movements were the outcome of an unreasoning fear - if she disarranged anything Robin might become confused - might lose the scent of home. — Djuna Barnes

Opportunity can benefit no man who has not fitted himself to seize it and use it. Opportunity woos the worthy, shuns the unworthy. Prepare yourself to grasp opportunity, and opportunity is likely to come your way. It is not so fickle, capricious and unreasoning as some complain. — B.C. Forbes

Phew!" His small blue eyes shone with repugnance, a look of such unreasoning contempt for my skin that it filled me with despair. It was a little thing, but piled on all the other little things it broke something in me. Suddenly I had had enough. Suddenly I could stomach no more of this degradation - not of myself but of all men who were black like me. — John Howard Griffin

There is only one way to respect the substance of any purported God-given moral edict: consider it conscientiously in the full light of reason, using all the evidence at our command. No God that was pleased by displays of unreasoning love would be worthy of worship. — Daniel C. Dennett

[H]e initially conceived of Olivier as a man of the greatest promise destroyed by a fatal flaw, the unreasoning passion for a woman dissolving into violence, desperately weakening everything he tried to do. For how could learning and poetry be defended when it produced such dreadful results and was advanced by such imperfect creatures? At least Julien did not see the desperate fate of the ruined lover as a nineteenth-century novelist or a poet might have done, recasting the tale to create some appealing romantic hero, dashed to pieces against the unyielding society that produced him. Rather, his initial opinion
held almost to the last
was of Olivier as a failure, ruined by a terible weakness. — Iain Pears

The dogged implicitness of emotional knowledge, its relentless unreasoning force, prevents logic from granting salvation just as it precludes self-help books from helping. The sheer volume and variety of helf-help paraphernalia testify at once to the vastness of the appetite they address and their inability to satisfy it. — Thomas Lewis

Where once stood the steadfast pines, great, beautiful, sweet, my hand touched raw, moist stumps. All about lay broken branches, like the antlers of stricken deer. The fragrant, piled-up sawdust swirled and tumbled about me. An unreasoning resentment flashed through me at the ruthless destruction of the beauty that I love. — Helen Keller

I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself. — Hermann Hesse

She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave and open, and there had fallen upon it the shadow of that unreasoning responsibility which is at the bottom of the most frivolous woman, the maternal watch which is as old as the world. — G.K. Chesterton

'There is no completeness; nothing endures, nothing lives; there is only change, unreasoning unreasonable; only birth and death repeating the same story each time, yet different; why?' The voice laughed
'Why you know already; look in your hands. — Vikram Chandra

Existence has become an unreasoning, wild dance around the golden calf, a mad worship of God Mammon. In that dance and in that worship man has sacrificed all his finer qualities of the heart and soul - kindness and justice, honor and manhood, compassion and sympathy with his fellowman. — Alexander Berkman

You can outline the people you've lived with these past years in a few sentences ... yet could you give an account of their lives, their hopes, their dreams? You could try, perhaps, but they would be much the same as yours ... for you are all an inexplicable unity - this family group with its twisted tensions, unreasoning loves and solidarity and loyalty born and bred in blood. These people are the ones most basically responsible for what you are. — Sylvia Plath

The incomprehensibleness of women is an old theory, but what is that to the curious wondering observation with which wives, mothers, and sisters watch the other unreasoning animal in those moments when he has snatched the reins out of their hands, and is not to be spoken to! . It is best to let him come to, and feel his own helplessness. — Margaret Oliphant

The townsfolk in their darkened rooms were dazed as if by some cataclysm, some devastating earthquake, against which all wisdom and all resistance is of no avail. Such a feeling is produced every time the established order of things is upset, when security is destroyed and everything is hitherto protected by the laws of man or nature is suddenly at the mercy of wild unreasoning brutality. — Guy De Maupassant

There is no greater block to world peace or inner peace than fear. What we fear we tend to develop an unreasoning hatred for, so we come to hate and fear. This not only injures us psychologically and aggravates world tension, but through such negative concentration we tend to attract the things we fear. If we fear nothing and radiate love, we can expect good things to come. How much this world needs the message and example of love and of faith! — Peace Pilgrim

It is as impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning. — Agnes Repplier

He argued unconvincingly that they would let him alone, perhaps even make an outlaw of him. But then the fatal unreasoning knowledge came to him again. The breaking of the conch and the death of Piggy and Simon lay over the island like a vapor. These painted savages would go further and further. Then there was that indefinable connection between himself and Jack; who therefore would never let him alone; never. — William Golding

People rely on intelligence to solve problems, and they are naturally baffled when comprehension proves impotent to effect emotional change. To the neocortical brain, rich in the power of abstractions, understanding makes all the difference, but it doesn't count for much in the neural systems that evolved before understanding existed. Ideas bounce like so many peas off the sturdy incomprehension of the limbic and reptilian brains. The dogged implicitness of emotional knowledge, its relentless unreasoning force, prevents logic from granting salvation just as it precludes self-help books from helping. The sheer volume and variety of self-help paraphernalia testify at once to the vastness of the appetite they address and their inability to satisfy it. (118) — Thomas Lewis

The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the cause for further discrimination. — W.E.B. Du Bois

I was struck that morning, as I would occasionally be struck the entire time I was in India, by the notion that the town was brown-skinned and black-haired, that their facial features approached my own. There was a solidarity, unexpected, unreasoning, that I felt with the people I passed on the street. They were, during those moments, my people, and though I had my difficulties with the subtleties of their language, thought our manners of dress and thought were distinct, though, perhaps, these people that I passed did not regard themselves as bound together in any particular way, at these instants I would disregard such nuance and imagine a profound relationship between us. Later, during stretches more lucid, I'd marvel at this rush of emotion and wonder as to its source. — Sameer Parekh

To act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the tides. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. — Helena Blavatsky

Almost, I think, the unreasoning, bestial purity was best. — Sylvia Plath

Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be. — Edna O'Brien

Dogmas are the toys that amuse and can satisfy but unreasoning children. They are the offspring of human speculation and prejudiced fancy. — H. P. Blavatsky

Philosophy may describe unreasoning, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to refute them. — George Santayana

Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up. — Octavia Butler

The sad truth of history has always been that the unreasoning masses follow the powerful, and not the wise. — George R R Martin

Unreasoning prejudices are bred out of the continual living in the past — Prentice Mulford

To act and act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait and wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the rising and falling tides (of affairs). So that with nature and law at his back, and truth and beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish wonders. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. Man thus becomes the victim of the tides when he should be their Master. — H. P. Blavatsky

Most new things are not good, and die an early death; but those which push themselves forward and by slow degrees force themselves on the attention of mankind are the unconscious productions of human wisdom, and must have honest consideration, and must not be made the subject of unreasoning prejudice. — Bill Vaughan

Superstition is an unreasoning fear of God. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The hope of the world is that wisdom can arrest conflict between brothers. I believe that war is the deadly harvest of arrogant and unreasoning minds. And I find grounds for this belief in the wisdom literature of Proverbs. It says in effect this: Panic strikes like a storm and calamity comes like a whirlwind to those who hate knowledge and ignore their God. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Love never forgets; or if it does, it is an imperfect love, like the beautiful love of a dog, faithful and unreasoning. — Margaret Deland

We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now mercifully stilled, thank God - might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had before. — Daphne Du Maurier

Most people, he suggested, are not capable of exercising reason. God created scripture for the unreasoning masses. He intended the Qur'an to be read in one of two ways. The learned, the falsafah, read it allegorically. 'Anyone who is not a man of learning', however, 'is obliged to take these passages in their apparent meaning.' 'Allegorical interpretation' of the Qur'an is, for the masses, Ibn Rushd suggested, the same as 'unbelief because it leads to unbelief'. — Kenan Malik

Whenever, in any era, culture, or society, you encounter the phenomenon of prejudice, injustice, persecution, and blind, unreasoning hatred directed at some minority group - look for the gang that has something to gain from that persecution, look for those who have a vested interest in the destruction of these particular sacrificial victims. Invariably, you will find that the persecuted minority serves as a scapegoat for some movement that does not want the nature of its own goals to be known. — Ayn Rand

Religions are easy to invent. Most traditional religions have little or nothing to do with reality, are dependent on obfuscation, interpretation, guilt, and unreasoning faith ... — Anton Szandor LaVey

There is something mankind can never destroy in spite of an unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that integral part of its very being. — Radclyffe Hall