Hard to Be Rational

We hear everyday people saying all around us: "I dare to reason". It is, however, a very difficult thing to do. I would go two hundred miles to look at the face of the man who dares to reason and to follow reason. 
Nothing is easier to say, and nothing is more difficult to do. We are bound to follow superstitions all the time--old, hoary superstitions, either national or belonging to humanity in general--superstitions belonging to family, to friends, to country, to fashion, to books, to sex and to what not.

Talk of reason! Very few people reason, indeed. 
You hear a man say, "Oh, I don't like to believe in anything; I don't like to grope through darkness. I must reason". 
And so he reasons. But when reason smashes to pieces things that he hugs unto his breast, he says, "No more! This reasoning is all right until it breaks my ideals. Stop there!" 

That man would never be a Jnani. That man will carry his bondage all his life and his lives to come. Again and again he will come under the power of death. Such men are not made for Jnana. 
There are other methods for them--such as Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga, or Râja Yoga--but not Jnana Yoga.  

                       - Swami Vivekananda, 
                         Class-Talk in New York, 
                         (December 11, 1895)