Reason

"I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect." -- Oscar Wilde

From Roger Ebert's Journal at the Chicago Sun Times, concerning Christopher Hitchens:

... The man can write. He has lived a life. He has seen for himself, making it a point to travel regularly to dangerous and wretched nations. He has been a man of political passion ... He takes his positions after a great deal of thought and he makes his reasons clear.

... shows himself as a man temperamentally driven to test his own opinions. He reasons instead of proselytizing. He exists as that most daring of writers, a freelance intellectual. He's a good speaker, can be funny, ... is passably good-looking, and is at no pains to be a charmer. He's popular because he's smart. He says nothing merely to be politic, although in some situations he may keep his meaning coiled well within.

We would all be lucky to be described in such a manner and to live in such a manner as to be deserving of the description.

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason." -- Immanuel Kant