Quotes About Rationality

Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy.

Back in 1993, he said, "An orangutan could figure out that the stock is selling miles above the value of the company if it were liquidated. I keep telling people this, but they keep buying the stock."24

Mieleltään sairaat voivat hyvinkin muodostaa enemmistön, mutta ei se tee heistä tervejärkisiä.

When you eliminate the impossible, all that remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' That's Spock in Star Trek VI, but he's paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. —BERTRAND RUSSELL

something which is absurd or logically contradictory, but which appears at first glance to be the result of sound reasoning.

The fact that everyone else is doing it doesn't make it any less insane.

Claro que necesitamos racionalidad en nuestras vidas.17 Pero también necesitamos afectos, es decir, apego, plenitud, alegría, amor, exaltación, juego, Yo, Nosotros.

Man is not only ruled by evil passions; but his rational capacity is severely limited as well. Without the warm cloak of custom, tradition, experience, history, religion, and social hierarchy—all of which radical man would rip off—man is shivering and naked. Free man from all mystery, demystify his institutions and his intellectual world, and you leave him alone in a universe of insignificance, incapacity, and inadequacy.

I should imagine, that the influence of reason in producing our passions is nothing near so extensive as it is commonly believed.

one by inflaming their passions, the other by extinguishing their reason

The absurd is clear reason recognizing its limits.

There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.

Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.

Above all, for Western people with their hypertrophied rationality, the development and expansion of a direct, emotional experience of reality, unobstructed by words and concepts, would be of evolutionary significance. (Aldous Huxley's "Human Resources")

One could think of American society as Bishop Warburton thought of the English Church, that like the ark of Noah it "is worth saving, not for the sake of the unclean beasts that almost filled it and probably made most noise and clamour in it, but for the little corner of rationality that was as much distressed by the stink within as by the tempest without." Nevertheless,

el ave del espiritu debe liberarse de la jaula racional

Vamos en una cárcel racional que navega dentro de un loco.

Man — a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.

In search of wit these lose their common sense

What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.