It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
--
As quoted in Treasury of thought: forming an encyclop?dia of quotations from ancient and modern authors (1872) by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 433Jonathan Swift
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To those who have an active belief, reasoned proofs are needless and probably useless.
Anthony the Great
The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward. Not only Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition. Legislation is, in one point of view, to be considered as an attempt to provide against the excesses of this deplorable mistake.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I have done no passably decent job in this world which did not at first seem to me useless - absurdly useless, useless to the point of nausea. My secret demon is called :What's the use?
Georges Bernanos
Just as eunuchs will never know aesthetics as applied to the selection of beautiful women, so neither will pure rationalists ever know ethics, nor will they ever succeed in defining happiness, for happiness is a thing that is lived and felt, not a thing that is reasoned or defined.
Miguel de Unamuno
The result was that when war did break out German preparations were far ahead of our own, and it was natural then to expect that the enemy would take advantage of his initial superiority to make an endeavour to overwhelm us and France before we had time to make good our deficiencies. Is it not a very extraordinary thing that no such attempt was made? Whatever may be the reason—whether it was that Hitler thought he might get away with what he had got without fighting for it, or whether it was that after all the preparations were not sufficiently complete—however, one thing is certain: he missed the bus.
Neville Chamberlain
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