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3459977 I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives. stereotypes men equality feminism women-s-rights self-determination independence women reason empowerment strength rationality social-norms flattery misogyny hypocrisy double-standards gender Jane Austen
650924c Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. understanding stupidity reason sense rationality Euripides
53156e4 Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition. reason intelligence disdain opposition discussion compliments rationality Jane Austen
25550a6 "Why make yourself miserable saying things like, "Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?" - all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life." -- science rationality Richard P. Feynman
949ac47 When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent. reason religion dissent rationality satire Salman Rushdie
cae3fa2 Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy--a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions. rationality values Ayn Rand
bffff0f It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says. life great-minds purpose-of-life rationality madmen Robert M. Pirsig
d9c34e9 The voices of cold reason were talking, as usual, to deaf ears. stubbornness reason rationality Ellis Peters
68f0b36 But there seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously -- after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be both ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth. (Most of his fans were just as ignorant and unlettered; the disease was spreading.) entertainers mistaken-attribution idols opinions rationality Robert A. Heinlein
28fe5dc "Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man's survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don't. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind. A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone's orders, directives, or controls; it does not sacrifice its knowledge, its view of the truth, to anyone's opinions, threats, wishes, plans, or "welfare." Such a mind may be hampered by others, it may be silenced, proscribed, imprisoned, or destroyed; it cannot be forced; a gun is not an argument. (An example and symbol of this attitude is Galileo.) It is from the work and the inviolate integrity of such minds--from the intransigent innovators--that all of mankind's knowledge and achievements have come. (See The Fountainhead.) It is to such minds that mankind owes its survival. (See Atlas Shrugged.)" individual rationality Ayn Rand
6c9c7f9 Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can do this either by teaching or engaging in public affairs itself, correcting through its practice. And the purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone, they become no more than beasts. mankind mind reason philosophy continuance civilization body rationality materialism Iain Pears
2f255f7 Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse. politics reason religion christopher-hitchens conversion united-states rationality revelation zealotry Norman G. Finkelstein
d0c2d64 Faith is stronger than so-called reason. reason h-h rationality Hermann Hesse
2ecccd0 ...no on of intelligence resents the inevitable. rationality Arthur C. Clarke
a0009a7 Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny -- and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do). evolution science rigor scrutiny objectivity rationality evidence Stephen Jay Gould
cf25fa0 As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge. understanding philosophy the-mind self-reflection logical-thinking rationality knowledge psychology C.G. Jung
d9dcfb9 The sexual mechanisms of the two genders are just not compatible, that's the horrible truth of it. (...) This is a truth we dare not acknowledge these days - because sameness is our religion and heretics are no more welcome now than they ever were - but I'm going to acknowledge it, because I've always felt that humility before the facts is the only thing that keeps a rational man together. Be humble in the face of facts, and proud in the face of opinions, as George Bernard Shaw once said. He didn't, actually. I just wanted to put some authority behind this observation of mine, because I know you're not going to like it. sex rationality Hugh Laurie
964cb87 If Quality were dropped, only rationality would remain unchanged. rationality Robert M. Pirsig
90c01f9 Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was the most Communist (and in the rather orthodox sense) of the Palestinian formations. I remember Edward once surprising me by saying, and apropos of nothing: 'Do you know something I have never done in my political career? I have never publicly criticized the Soviet Union. It's not that I terribly sympathize with them or anything--it's just that the Soviets have never done anything to harm me, or us.' At the time I thought this a rather naive statement, even perhaps a slightly contemptible one, but by then I had been in parts of the Middle East where it could come as a blessed relief to meet a consecrated Moscow-line atheist-dogmatist, if only for the comparatively rational humanism that he evinced amid so much religious barking and mania. It was only later to occur to me that Edward's pronounced dislike of George Orwell was something to which I ought to have paid more attention. humanism politics religion dflp moscow dogmatism orwell liberation middle-east edward-said soviet-union rationality palestine palestinians religious-extremism communism Christopher Hitchens
9c70d4d Reasonable doubt trumps everything. reason legal reasonable-doubt trump lawyer rationality logic Rebecca McNutt
24955cc Rationality or consciousness is itself a ratio or proportion among the sensuous components of experience, and is not something added to such sense experience. Subrational beings have no means of achieving such a ratio or proportion in their sense lives but are wired for fixed wave lengths, as it were, having infallibility in their own area of experience. Consciousness, complex and subtle, can be impaired or ended by a mere stepping-up or dimming-down of any one sense intensity, which is the procedure in hypnosis. And the intensification of one sense by a new medium can hypnotize an entire community. rationality Marshall McLuhan
493b254 The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'. faith religion prejudism rationality Richard Dawkins
26dac7e When everything impossible had been eliminated and what remains is supernatural, then someone is lying. scepticism rationality evidence Isaac Asimov
81f2d3c Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface. reason rationality Karen Joy Fowler
c6fa9ce "It was a fairy tale, no fooling. It was unreality becoming real. This frightened her. Because people don't care for unreality becoming real. It pricks their well-fed minds, you see, with something like a hunger pang. They prefer the logical stuffiness of expectancy. It is only at certain times that they weaken, letting imagination in. That's the time to get them. ("The Disinheritors")" reality imagination unreality rationality Richard Matheson
8db037c One could be forgiven for supposing that rationality (or, more softly, 'reasonableness') is irrelevant - and even possibly opposed - to being a good lover. This is perhaps because we tend to think of love as a feeling, rather than as an achievement of intelligence. A reasonable or rational person is not one who is only interested in logic, or someone who tries in a cold, robotic fashion to substitute calculation and analysis for kindness or yearning. We are reasonable when we are moved by accurate explanation. Thus a reasonable person is slow to anger; they do not jump to conclusions relationships rationality Alain de Botton
7fb8911 Of course, when you shut off your brain from rational analysis, book is dangerous. Taking literally ancient parables from thousands of years ago is much more dangerous than playing with a loaded gun. Ancient scrawls, written by different authors in different centuries with different agendas--yeah, let's get mad literal about . The literalness problem is compounded in religion by the circular logic of not being allowed to question anything, or else you're lacking faith. religion humor biblical-literalism literalism rationality logic Bill Maher
9a4b42f Considering he was neither priest nor scholar, the young man gave sensible, thoughtful replies -- the more so, perhaps, for being untrained, for he had not learned what he should believe or should not believe. Present a statement to him in flagrant contradiction to all Christian doctrine and he could be persuaded to agree on its good sense, unless he remembered it was the sort of thing of which pyres are made for the incautious. freedom reason education philosophy good-sense freedom-of-religion inquisition doctrine schooling rationality freedom-of-thought independent-thought persecution Iain Pears
6e8f237 "Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself." reason philosophy motorcycle-maintenance motorcycle rationality Robert M. Pirsig
0d8a7a3 There is no perfectly shaped part of the motorcycle and never will be, but when you come as close as these instruments take you, remarkable things happen, and you go flying across the countryside under a power that would be called magic if it were not so completely rational in every way. perfection philosophy motorcycle-maintenance motorcycles rationality Robert M. Pirsig
6cd9b10 The most flattering spin I can put on this phase of paradoxes and metaphysical tangles is that I was smart enough, at age fourteen, to destroy any fledgling hypothesis I came up with. A tentative explanation, theory, or formulation would pop up in my brain only to be attacked by what amounted to a kind of logical immune system, bent on eliminating all that was weak or defective. Which is to say that my mind had become a scene of furious predation, littered with the half-eaten corpses of vast theories and brilliant syntheses. philosophy metaphysics rationality Barbara Ehrenreich
d7d70fd It seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mistery. failure-of-imagination rationality Zoë Heller
2a8b0e0 It's difficult to know where to begin, sir.' 'Yes, the beginning is the tricky part. But perhaps there is no beginning, perhaps we can't look that far back.' He got up from his desk and went over to the window, from where he could see thin pillar of smoke rising into the clouds. 'I never know where anything comes from, Walter.' 'Comes from, sir?' 'Where you come from, where I come from, where all this comes from.' And he gestured at the offices and homes beneath him. He was about to say something else but he stopped, embarrassed; and in any case he was coming to the limits of his understanding. He was not sure if all the movements and changes in the world were part of some coherent development, like the weaving of a quilt which remains one fabric despite its variegated pattern. Or was it a more delicate operation than this - like the enlarging surface of a balloon in the sense that, although each part increased at the same rate of growth as every other part, the entire object grew more fragile as it expanded? And if one element was suddenly to vanish, would the others disappear also - imploding upon each other helplessly as if time itself were unravelling amid a confusion of Sights, calls, shrieks and phrases of music which grew smaller and smaller? He thought of a train disappearing into the distance, until eventually only the smoke and the smell of its engine remained. reason patterns pattern rationality Peter Ackroyd
9979d32 I have long been of the Opinion, says he, that the Fire was a vast Blessing and the Plague likewise; it gave us Occasion to understand the Secrets of Nature which otherwise might have overwhelm'd us. (I busied my self with the right Order of the Draughts, and said nothing.) With what Firmness of Mind, Sir Chris. went on, did the People see their City devoured, and I can still remember how after the Plague and the Fire the Chearfulnesse soon returned to them: Forgetfulnesse is the great Mystery of Time. I remember, I said as I took a Chair opposite to him, how the Mobb applauded the Flames. I remember how they sang and danced by the Corses during the Contagion: that was not Chearfulnesse but Phrenzy. And I remember, also, the Rage and the Dying - These were the Accidents of Fortune, Nick, from which we have learned so much in this Generation. It was said, sir, that the Plague and the Fire were no Accidents but Substance, that they were the Signes of the Beast withinne. And Sir Chris. laughed at this. At which point Nat put his Face in: Do you call, sirs? Would you care for a Dish of Tea or some Wine? Some Tea, some Tea, cried Sir Chris. for the Fire gives me a terrible Thirst. But no, no, he continued when Nat had left the Room, you cannot assign the Causes of Plague or Fire to Sin. It was the negligence of Men that provoked those Disasters and for Negligence there is a Cure; only Terrour is the Hindrance. Terrour, I said softly, is the Lodestone of our Art. mankind humanity plague rationality terror Peter Ackroyd
3adb63a It is one of the greatest Curses visited upon Mankind, he told me, that they shall fear where no Fear is: this astrological and superstitious Humour disarms men's Hearts, it breaks their Courage, it makes them help to bring such Calamities on themselves. Then he stopped short and looked at me, but my Measure was not yet fill'd up so I begg' d him to go on, go on. And he continued: First, they fancy that such ill Accidents must come to pass, and so they render themselves fit Subjects to be wrought upon; it is a Disgrace to the Reason and Honour of Mankind that every fantasticall Humourist can presume to interpret the Skies (here he grew Hot and put down his Dish) and to expound the Time and Seasons and Fates of Empires, assigning the Causes of Plagues and Fires to the Sins of Men or the Judgements of God. This weakens the Constancy of Humane Actions, and affects Men with Fears, Doubts, Irresolutions and Terrours. I was afraid of your Moving Picture, I said without thought, and that was why I left. It was only Clock-work, Nick. But what of the vast Machine of the World, in which Men move by Rote but in which nothing is free from Danger? Nature yields to the Froward and the Bold. It does not yield, it devours: You cannot master or manage Nature. But, Nick, our Age can at least take up the Rubbidge and lay the Foundacions: that is why we must study the principles of Nature, for they are our best Draught. No, sir, you must study the Humours and Natures of Men: they are corrupt, and therefore your best Guides to understand Corrupcion. The things of the Earth must be understood by the sentient Faculties, not by the Understanding. There was a Silence between us now until Sir Chris. says, Is your Boy in the Kitchin? I am mighty Hungry. time nature science rational rationality logic superstition Peter Ackroyd
f932151 If my brain can ttell the difference between noise and signal, my heart cannot. rationality randomness Nassim Nicholas Taleb
ce1f93f And when the Duke of Alva ordered three hundred Citizens to be put to Death together at Antwerp, a Lady who saw the Sight was presently afterwards deliver'd of a Child without a Head. So lives the Power of Imagination even in this Rationall Age. wonders rationality Peter Ackroyd
536335a This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night; there is not a Field without its Spirits, nor a City without its Daemons, and the Lunaticks speak Prophesies while the Wise men fall into the Pitte. We are all in the Dark, one with another. And, as the Inke stains the Paper on which it is spilt and slowly spreads to Blot out the Characters, so the Contagion of darkness and malefaction grows apace until all becomes unrecognizable. Thus it was with the Witches who were tryed by Swimming not long before, since once the Prosecution had commenced no Stop could be put to the raving Women who came forward: the number of Afflicted and Accused began to encrease and, upon Examination, more confess'd themselves guilty of Crimes than were suspected of. And so it went, till the Evil revealed was so great that it threatened to bring all into Confusion. And yet in the way of that Philosophie much cryed up in London and elsewhere, there are those like Sir Chris. who speak only of what is Rational and what is Demonstrated, of Propriety and Plainness. Religion Not Mysterious is their Motto, but if they would wish the Godhead to be Reasonable why was it that when Adam heard that Voice in the Garden he was afraid unto Death? The Mysteries must become easy and familiar, it is said, and it has now reached such a Pitch that there are those who wish to bring their mathematicall Calculations into Morality, viz. the Quantity of Publick Good produced by any Agent is a compound Ratio of his Benevolence and Abilities, and such like Excrement. They build Edifices which they call Systems by laying their Foundacions in the Air and, when they think they are come to sollid Ground, the Building disappears and the Architects tumble down from the Clowds. Men that are fixed upon matter, experiment, secondary causes and the like have forgot there is such a thing in the World which they cannot see nor touch nor measure: it is the Praecipice into which they will surely fall. morality witches darkness malefaction witch-trials occult-philosophy occult occultism corruption witch rationality Peter Ackroyd
e860870 I try to be rational (or at least my imaginary facsimile of what rationality is supposed to be). I try to look at the available data objectively (fully aware that this is impossible). I try to extrapolate what be happening now into what be happening later. And this, of course, is where naive realism punches me in the throat. There's simply no way around the limited ceiling of my own mind. It's flat-out impossible to speculate on the future without (a) consciously focusing on the most obvious aspects of what we already know and (b) unconsciously excluding all the things we don't have the intellectual potential to grasp. objectivity rationality prediction Chuck Klosterman
ee994cd In a state which is really articulated rationally all the laws and organizations are nothing but a realization of freedom in its essential characteristics. When this is the case, the individual's reason finds in these institutions, only the actuality of his own essence, and if he obeys these laws, he coincides, not with something alien to himself, but simply with what is his own. Freedom of choice, of course, is often equally called 'freedom'; but freedom of choice is only non-rational freedom, choice and self-determination issuing not from the rationality of the will but from fortuitous impulses and their dependence on sense and the external world. individuality the-state institutions hegel rationality laws modernity Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
0a6c984 No validation of our rationality - of our very sanity - can be accomplished using our rationality itself. How can a person operating within a system of beliefs, including beliefs about beliefs, get outside that system to determine whether it is rational? If your entire system becomes infected with madness, including the very rules by which you reason, then how can you ever reason your way out of your madness? sanity reality rationality Rebecca Goldstein
693c403 "You'd think that it would make them all the more credible to be free of any obvious agenda or emotional bias, motivated only by objective logic. But there's something off-putting about these hyperrational types; they're immune to any appeals to common sense or humor, the for fuck's sake defense. [...] As Kim Stanley Robinson writes, "An excess of reason is in itself a form of madness"." rational-debate rationality Tim Kreider
509dc7d "When an economist attempts to prove that it is "irrational" to vote in national elections (because the effort expended outweighs the likely benefit to the individual voter), they use the term because they do not wish to say "irrational for actors for whom civic participation, political ideals, of the common good are not values in themselves, but who view public affairs only in terms of personal advantage." economist rationality values David Graeber
a2ddfe4 "She was surprised because she was Emily, and she did not share Jonathan's frank assessment of coworkers as losers, whiners, bozos, sharks. No, she imagined people were rational and courteous, as she was, and when they proved otherwise, she assumed that she could influence them to become that way. Dangerous thinking. When she was truthful, she expected to hear the truth. Reasonable, she expected reasonable behavior in return. She was young, inventive, fantastically successful. She trusted in the world, believing in poetic justice- that good ideas blossomed and bore fruit, while dangerous schemes were meant to wither on the vine. She had passions and petty jealousies like everybody else, but she was possessed of a serene rationality. At three, she had listened while her mother sang "Greensleeves" in the dark, and she'd asked: "Why are you singing 'Greensleeves' when my nightgown is blue?" Then Gillian had changed the song to "Bluesleeves," and Emily had drifted off. Those songs were over now, Gillian long gone. Despite this loss- because of it- Emily was still that girl, seeking consonance and symmetry, logic, light." gillian-bach logical reasonable rational rationality Allegra Goodman
f4a8373 It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold. prejudice bias rationality values Peter Singer
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