Quotes About Rationality

in the fears and follies of man, but on his reason.…

I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?

It is slightly chilling to realize there are rational, functional people up there employed to spot, nurture, and exploit those down here among us who are irrational and can barely cope. If you want to know how stupid you're perceived to be by the people up there, count the unsolicited junk mail you receive. If you get a lot, you're perceived to be alluringly stupid.

I thought about my own over-anxious brain, my own sort of madness. Was it a more powerful engine in my life than my rationality?

If it was as logical as that, I wouldn't continue to feel as bad as I do. I know what you're saying, and you're absolutely right in a way. But logic and rationality only go so far. Then you know what happens? Ha! Then your heart adds its two cents and everything reasonable goes right-out-the-window.

Overindulgence had shattered his lambent rationality into myriad splinters, each consisting of an insight unrelated to any other, each brightly reflecting a star-hot whiteness now blazing in his stomach; he thought he might vomit.

Science and delusion had no ground in common.

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.

Rationally, factory farming is so obviously wrong, in so many ways. In all of my reading and conversations, I've yet to find a credible defense of it. But food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, and identity. For some, that irrationality leads to a kind of resignation. Food

Rationally, factory farming is so obviously wrong, in so many ways. In all of my reading and conversations, I've yet to find a credible defense of it. But food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, and identity.

You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.

for they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised, or exhorted; because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a rational creature.

Añadió que nuestra institución de gobierno y de ley obedecía, sencillamente, a los grandes defectos de nuestra razón y, por consiguiente, de nuestra virtud, ya que la razón por sí sola es suficiente para dirigir un ser racional.

No se concibe que una criatura racional pueda ser obligada, sino aconsejada o exhortada, porque nadie puede desobedecer la razón sin renunciar al derecho de ser considerado una criatura racional.

Por muy basto que fuera el entendimiento de un hombre, siempre sería superior al de irracionales. El inmortal

Si un científico se empecina en explicar eso con razones naturales lo único que demuestra es lo poco razonable que puede llegar a ser. Es decir, demostraría que está usando la razón a su antojo, como un medio para llegar a una verdad que ya ha decidido de antemano.

The paranoic is logical. Indeed, he is strikingly meticulously logical.

Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the community. All children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind.

All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy.

Mythology is not invented rationally; mythology cannot be rationally understood.

When all else fails, men turn to reason.

The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.

the "human need for transcendence should be met with minimal embarrassments to reason,

The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.