These unreasonable quotes will inspire you. Unreasonable, not guided by or based on good sense or beyond the limits of acceptability or fairness.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging unreasonable quotes, unreasonable sayings, and unreasonable proverbs.
Best Unreasonable Quotes
- “We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.” ~ Richard P. Feynman
- “Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.” ~ Henri Bergson
- “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “When you respond to an unreasonable person by getting emotional, you give them victory. How do you manage unreasonable people? You dismiss them. Like shadows” ~ David Viscott
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“Unreasonable haste is the direct road to error.” ~ Moliere
- “People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway…. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway…. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. .. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.” ~ Mother Teresa
- “It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics.” ~ Stephen Hawking
- “In human life there is constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing.” ~ Plutarch
- “A woman will allow herself to be clouded by her emotions. Her reasonable thought becomes completely unreasonable over the most ridiculous thing. It’s a girl thing.” ~ Lea DeLaria
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“People are unrealistic, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway.” ~ Mother Teresa
- “One day, I just thought, if you see a bird with a broken leg, you really have the urge to do something about it and help the bird, then at the same time you go to a restaurant and eat a chicken or something. It doesn’t make any sense.” ~ Patrik Baboumian
- “If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.” ~ Mother Teresa
- “To all the rest of his Absurdities, (for vice is always unreasonable,) he adds one more, who expects that Vertue from another which he won’t practise himself.” ~ Mary Astell
- “Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.” ~ Richard P. Feynman
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“If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.” ~ Mother Teresa
- “In the light of our culture, these are not unreasonable questions and tactics, but if once again, we try to see the lens through which we look, we can see that there is far too great an emphasis placed on the future.” ~ Alan Dundes
- “All progress depends upon the unreasonable person.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “In the final analysis it is between you and God, it was never between you and them anyway.” ~ Mother Teresa
- “It must always be remembered that what the Constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.” ~ Potter Stewart
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“All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” ~ Potter Stewart
- “Statutes authorizing unreasonable searches were the core concern of the framers of the 4th Amendment.” ~ Sandra Day O’Connor
- “What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight; build it anyway.” ~ Mother Teresa
- “It does not seem to me that the steps which would be needed to make Britain – and others – more comfortable in their relationship in the European Union are inherently so outlandish or unreasonable.” ~ David Cameron
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“We do not see the lens through which we look.” ~ Ruth Benedict
- “Good schools, good jobs, good government. These are not unreasonable demands. But sadly, some of our people have already lost heart and have left Hawaii to look for these things elsewhere.” ~ Linda Lingle
- “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” ~ Adam Smith
- “Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?” ~ Petrarch
- “I grinned at him. ‘Jealous?’ He grinned right back. ‘That’s a trick question. If I say yes you’ll accuse me of being paranoid and unreasonable, and if I say no you’ll make some defensive crack about how I don’t think you’re worth getting jealous over.’ This is what I got for hooking up with a lawyer.” ~ Carrie Vaughn
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“I am tough. Sometimes I’m unreasonable. I have to catch myself every once in a while.” ~ George Steinbrenner
- “If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he’s not the problem.” ~ Jon Stewart
- “Nothing drives your opponents more crazy than being utterly reasonable. And nothing makes demonizing or delegitimizing your opponents easier than letting them shriek unreasonable things for you. The Republicans need to get back to being the party that elicits unreasonable shrieking from their opponents. Not the other way around.” ~ Jonah Goldberg
- “Require nothing unreasonable of your officers and men, but see that whatever is required be punctually complied with. Reward and punish every man according to his merit, without partiality or prejudice; hear his complaints; if well founded, redress them; if otherwise, discourage them, in order to prevent frivolous ones. Discourage vice in every shape, and impress upon the mind of every man, from the first to the lowest, the importance of the cause, and what it is they are contending for.” ~ George Washington
- “Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.” ~ Catherynne M. Valente
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“It is unreasonable [for a father] to expect moral success with [his] children without submitting to the laws of morality.” ~ Larry Christenson
- “Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.” ~ Richard Mitchell
- “The reasonable man will adjust to the demands of his environment. The unreasonable man expects his environment to adjust to his own needs. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “I hate the way, once you start to know someone, care about them, their behavior can distress you, even when it’s unreasonable and not your fault, even if you were really trying to be careful, tactful.” ~ Tanith Lee
- “The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. … It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wilderness lies in wait.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“It is but refusing to gratify an unreasonable or an insolent demand, and up starts a patriot.” ~ Robert Walpole
- “In a world threatened by a famine of righteousness and spiritual starvation, we have been commanded to sustain the prophet. As we give heed to, uphold, and affirm prophetic word, we witness that we have the faith to humbly submit to the will, the wisdom, and the timing of the Lord. We heed prophetic word even when it may seem unreasonable, inconvenient, and uncomfortable. According to the world’s standards, following the prophet may be unpopular, politically incorrect, or socially unacceptable. But following the prophet is always right.” ~ Carol F. McConkie
- “I see nothing wrong ethically with the idea of correcting single gene defects through genetic engineering. But I am concerned about any other kind of intervention, for anything else would be an experiment, which would impose our will on future generations and take unreasonable chances with their welfare … Thus such intervention is beyond the scope of consideration.” ~ Ian Wilmut
- “I have tried, with little success, to get some of my friends to understand my amazement that the abstraction of integers for counting is both possible and useful. Is it not remarkable that 6 sheep plus 7 sheep makes 13 sheep; that 6 stones plus 7 stones make 13 stones? Is it not a miracle that the universe is so constructed that such a simple abstraction as a number is possible? To me this is one of the strongest examples of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Indeed, I find it both strange and unexplainable.” ~ Richard Hamming
- “Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don’t know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.” ~ P. D. James
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“Reason is so unreasonable, that few people can say they are in possession of it.” ~ Lord Byron
- “The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that I have found what I was searching for without ever having discovered what it was.” ~ Peter Matthiessen
- “Patience is a most necessary qualification for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request. One must seem to hear the unreasonable demands of the petulant, unmoved, and the tedious details of the dull, untired. That is the least price that a man must pay for a high station.” ~ Bill Vaughan
- “It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.” ~ Michel de Montaigne
- “Since art exists for humanity it is not unreasonable to assume that humanity has some rights in the matter. Who pays the piper calls the tune. An artist cannot be at once a rebel and a comfortable citizen.” ~ Walter J. Phillips
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“Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.” ~ Hans Arp
- “Those who would legislate against the teaching of evolution should also legislate against gravity, electricity and the unreasonable velocity of light, and also, should introduce a clause to prevent the use of the telescope, the microscope and the spectroscope or any other instrument of precision which may in the future be invented, constructed or used for the discovery of truth.” ~ Luther Burbank
- “To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” ~ Walter Cronkite
- “Children need directing and teaching what is right in a kind, affectionate manner How often we see parents demand obedience, good behavior, kind words, pleasant looks, a sweet voice and a bright eye from a child or children when they themselves are full of bitterness and scolding! How inconsistent and unreasonable this is!” ~ Brigham Young
- “Do not despise the fish because they are absolutely unable to speak or to reason, but fear lest you may be even more unreasonable than they by resisting the command of the Creator. Listen to the fish, who through their actions all but utter this word: ‘We set out on this long journey for the perpetuation of our species.” ~ Saint Basil
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“It’s important for the children’s point of view. That they have parents who are equally unreasonable, but in different ways.” ~ Guy Jenkin
- “It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. …But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author’s words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.” ~ John Dryden
- “I think a lot of people have unreasonable expectations because they never stop to consider what life actually has to offer them. They’re always looking for some great epiphany from the skies. They never stop to consider the fact which human beings find hardest to recognize: “Maybe I’m not worthy of an epiphany.” ~ Robertson Davies
- “Can you understand why the Congress, most states and most cities refuse to pass legislation requiring the registration and licensing of any and all guns? For the life of me, I can’t. We must register our cars and be licensed to drive. In many places we must get licenses for dogs and even bicycles. Being required to register firearms and show the competence and capacity to handle them hardly seems unreasonable, hardly seems an infringement of freedom. What is it that blocks such legislation? Why do they block it? How are they able to block it?” ~ Malcolm Forbes
- “I wish there were some cure, like the lover’s leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.” ~ Samuel Johnson
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“Anything really new is repulsive, because it is abnormal and unreasonable.” ~ Asger Jorn
- “Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens.” ~ Fran Lebowitz
- “Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.” ~ Bernard Malamud
- “A [Jewish] woman could not divorce her husband, but she could petition for divorce, and the religious courts could force him to grant the divorce on grounds of impotence, denial of conjugal rights, or unreasonable restriction of her freedom-for example, preventing her from attending funerals or wedding parties.” ~ Israel Shenker
- “The tastes and pursuits of manhood will bear on them the traces of the earlier impressions of our education. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that some portion of the neglect of science in England, may be attributed to the system of education we pursue.” ~ Charles Babbage
- “Is it to be thought unreasonable that the people, in atonement for wrongs of a century, demand the vengeance of a single day?” ~ Maximilien Robespierre
