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a669134
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The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.
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struggle
reason
nirvana
class
society
utopia
irrationality
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Christopher Hitchens |
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0c8a80e
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We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.
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fanatic
irrationality
secularism
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G.K. Chesterton |
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6f8955c
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If you can't define something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists. Neither can you really tell anyone else what it is. There is, in fact, no formal difference between inability to define and stupidity.
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stupidity
rational-thought
language
logic
irrationality
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6195bd9
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge was right when he claimed, 'In politics, what begins in fear usually ends up in folly.' Political activists are more inclined, though, to heed an observation from Richard Nixon: 'People react to fear, not love. They don't teach that in Sunday school, but it's true.' That principle, which guided the late president's political strategy throughout his career, is the sine qua non of contemporary political campaigning. Marketers of products and services ranging from car alarms to TV news programs have taken it to heart as well. The short answer to why Americans harbor so many misbegotten fears is that immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes.
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politics
fear
power
irrationality
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Barry Glassner |
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54f4d96
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That's right; put on the steam, fasten down the escape-valve, and sit on it, and see there you'll land.
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irrationality
stupid-decisions
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Harriet Beecher Stowe |
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ea80093
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Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.
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futility
imagination
dreams
cloud-cuckoo-land
irreality
phantasy
desires
wishful-thinking
wishes
irrationality
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Iain Pears |
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43ac554
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"Then the true name for religion,' Fat said, 'is death.' 'The secret name,' I agreed. 'You got it. Jesus died; Asklepios died - they killed Mani worse than they killef jesus, but nobody even cares; nobody even remembers. They killed the Catharist in southern France by the tens of thousands. In the Thirty Years War, hundreds of people died. Protestants and Catholics - manual slaughter. Death is the real name for it; not God, not the Savior, not love - death. Kevin is rights about his cat. It's all there in his dead cat. The Great Judge can't answer Kevin: "Why did my cat die?" Answer: "Damned i I knoe." There is no answer; there is only a dead animal that just wanted to cross the street. We're all animals that want to cross the street only something mows us down half-way across that we never saw. Go ask Kevin. "Your cat was stupid." "Who made the cat? Why did he make the cat stupid? Did the cat learn by being killed, and if so, what did he learn? Did Sherri learn anything from dying of cancer? did gloria learn anything-' 'Okay, enough,' Fat said. 'Kevin is right,' I said. 'Go out and get laid.'
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world
humanity
spirituality
religion
god
life
science-fiction
irrationality
human-nature
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Philip K. Dick |