Quotes About Rationality

The main thing that you learn in grad school, or should learn, is how to think like an economist. The rest is just math.

I believe only in the mathematics.

I am not an adolescent, nor a romantic. I analyze objectively.

In politics and in society, we can use our reason to rise above our parochial natures. Too bad that our elected officials don't choose to do so more often.

illusion of rationality." We are all vulnerable to this illusion. It happens when ideas or assumptions seem logical in a plan, spreadsheet model, PowerPoint, or memo, yet they haven't been validated on the ground or in the real world.

We also know, of course, that human beings are not perfectly rational calculators. Our behavior and decisions are based on a mixture of calculation, emotions, and internalized norms, with calculation often a minor component of the cocktail.

Add to that the age-old principle of Ockham's razor in problem-solving: "If there are a number of possible solutions, the simplest one, based on the fewest assumptions, is most likely to be correct.

Hell, rationality itself—the exalted Human ability to reason—hadn't evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will.

THE INTUITIVE MIND IS A SACRED GIFT AND THE RATIONAL MIND IS A FAITHFUL SERVANT. WE HAVE CREATED A SOCIETY THAT HONORS THE SERVANT AND HAS FORGOTTEN THE GIFT. —ALBERT EINSTEIN (APOCRYPHAL)

People aren't rational. You aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're—we're feeling machines that happen to think.

People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think.

The dilemma of Brechtian performance is that, for all of Brecht's emphasis on rationality and the undermining of theatrical illusion, the actor must convincingly portray something that she is not.

In order to decide, judge; in order to judge, reason; in order to reason, decide (what to reason about).

Anger, the Stoics said, was a short madness.

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.

Nietzsche's subtle, poetic, and entirely unsystemic attacks on academic style and thinking were predestined to be quoted out of context, and his pithy and often sarcastic observations could be put in the service of a wider assault on rationality itself.

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

Entre el estoicismo y Nietzsche se abre un abismo. Mientras que el «sí» estoico es consentimiento a la racionalidad del mundo, la afirmación dionisíaca de la existencia de la que habla Nietzsche es un «sí» dado a la irracionalidad, a la crueldad ciega de la vida, a la voluntad de poder más allá del bien y del mal

Truth is about propositions. When it comes to determining truth, it is vital to understand the methods used by individuals in asserting propositions.

People vote based on emotion. Period.

It's not wrong to be skeptical. I was one who participated in the debate on Iraq and voted against the resolution because I was skeptical of the intelligence. But that was based on looking at the facts, analyzing the case in as rational and as logical way as you can, not simply concluding or dismissing facts.

In George W. Bush's case, the public paid far too little attention to the role of religion in his thinking. Many voters failed to appreciate that while Bush's religious beliefs may be moderate Methodist ones, he was someone who relied on his faith immoderately, as an alternative to rational understanding of complex issues.

There were many, many fine reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act—a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument.

Faith is the very antithesis of reason