Quotes About Rationality

The great Enlightenment principles of modernity—liberalism, secularism, rationality, equality, free markets—do not provide the kind of tribal group identity that human beings crave and have always craved. They have strengthened individual rights and individual liberty, created unprecedented opportunity and prosperity, transformed human consciousness, but they speak to people as individuals and as members of the human race, whereas the tribal instinct occupies the realm in between.

Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.

What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.

De toutes les définitions de l'homme la plus mauvaise me paraît celle qui en fait un animal raisonnable.

La razón guía y alumbra, pero si la divinizáis, acaso ciegue y sea instigadora de crímenes…

J'ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de l'indifférence.

One might have said that reason made him flee from reason.

For the first time in history, the rational and the good are fully armed in the battle against evil. Here we finally find the answer to our paradox; now we can understand the nature of the social power held by evil. Ultimately, the evil, the irrational, truly has no power. The evil men's control of morality is transient; it lives on borrowed time made possible only by the errors of the good. In time, as more honest men grasp the truth, evil's stranglehold will be easily broken.

We have to assume that the people whose dwelling-places, artefacts, lives even, we are dealing with were rational, integrated, sane and sensible human beings. Then we look around at our own contemporaries and wonder how this belief can possibly be sustained.

philosopher named Descartes

My answer is that I've found it an absorbing example of how a society can cling to policies and practices that serve no rational purpose. They persist because they become embedded, usually bolstered by those who benefit. Nor are the issues entirely academic. Making mathematics a barrier ends up suppressing opportunities, stifling creativity, and denying society a wealth of varied talents.

Illegal immigrants make a rational choice when they decide to violate our immigration laws. They weigh the costs, including the risks of getting caught, against the benefits of a better life.

The only shibboleth the West has is science. It is the premise of modernity and it defines itself as a rationality capable of, indeed requiring separation from politics, religion and really, society. Modernisation is to work towards this.

Religion, as it is understood in the West, does not lead toward progress, and science does not lead toward humanism.

The concept of historical necessity is the product of rational thought and arrived in Russia by the Western route. The idea of the noble savage, of an inherently good human nature hampered by bad institutions, of the ideal state, of social justice and so forth - none of these originated or blossomed on the banks of the Volga.

If western culture is shown to be rich, it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to 'dissolve' harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.

The thing for me about Ayn Rand is that her philosophy is the only one applicable to the world today - in every sense. If you take her ideas, then take them farther in your own mind, you can find answers to pretty well everything on an individual basis.

Tastes and behavior are important in economics. Nobody denies that. But the question is: How much of behavior is irrational, and how much of the irrational behavior really affects prices? It turns out that's very difficult to answer.

Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.

Being an atheist makes someone a clearer thinking, fairer person. They [atheists] are not doing things to be rewarded in heaven; they're doing things because they're right, because they live by a moral code.

Science makes us understand how to stay alive longer - feelings give us the reason to want to

If the world was truly a rational place, men would ride sidesaddle.