Quotes About Rationality

My hope is that this book will help us all make those decisions with more facts than emotions, and more awareness than fear.

whether or not it is economically rational to aggressively respond to climate change depends on the discount rate, which in turn depends on answering questions that standard economic theory is not prepared to address.

Reason generates the list of possibilities. Emotion chooses from that list.

Reason returns and so [Nebuchadnezzar] blesses the Most High. That is what sane people do -- they offer adoration to the God of heaven. Truly rational people talk like this; they confess the supremacy of the King of heaven.

The only defence against raw, naked feeling was reason. Understanding made sadness easier to bear.

I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil—you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself.

But when our faith causes us to check our brains at the door, we have fallen far from the God who gave us the capacity for reason.

las emociones viscerales y la rabia tienen más peso que el cálculo racional de los costes y beneficios económicos.

out-of-control emotions can make smart people stupid.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant," Albert Einstein once said. "We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Economists studied what people did, rather than what we said, because we did what was best for us.

largely metaphorical."7 In a complex world, mastery of metaphor—a whole-minded ability that some cognitive scientists have called "imaginative rationality"—has become ever more valuable

Indeed, the very premise of extrinsic incentives is that we'll always respond rationally to them. But even most economists don't believe that anymore. Sometimes these motivators work. Often they don't. And many times, they inflict collateral damage. In short, the new way economists think about what we do is hard to reconcile with Motivation 2.0.

Think about what this information means, practically, as we raise kids who don't have constant access to their upstairs brain. It's unrealistic to expect them always to be rational, regulate their emotions, make good decisions, think before acting, and be empathetic—all of the things a developed upstairs brain helps them do.

Experts who acknowledge the full extent of their ignorance may expect to be replaced by more confident competitors, who are better able to gain the trust of clients. An unbiased appreciation of uncertainty is a cornerstone of rationality—but it is not what people and organizations want.

To be useful, your beliefs should be constrained by the logic of probability.

If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 will find a related question that is easier and will answer it. I call the operation of answering one question in place of another substitution.

First, people are generally rational, and their thinking is normally sound. Second, emotions such as fear, affection, and hatred explain most of the occasions on which people depart from rationality.

An unbiased appreciation of uncertainty is a cornerstone of rationality—but it is not what people and organizations want. Extreme uncertainty is paralyzing under dangerous circumstances, and the admission that one is merely guessing is especially unacceptable when the stakes are high. Acting on pretended knowledge is often the preferred solution.

The only test of rationality is not whether a person's beliefs and preferences are reasonable, but whether they are internally consistent.

Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness.

There are strange flowers of reason to match each error of the senses.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.