Quotes About Rationality

It would be wrong for anything to stand between you and attaining goodness—as a rational being and a citizen. Anything at all: the applause of the crowd, high office, wealth, or self-indulgence. All of them might seem to be compatible with it—for a while. But suddenly they control us and sweep us away.

He never exhibited rudeness, lost control of himself, or turned violent. No one ever saw him sweat. Everything was to be approached logically and with due consideration, in a calm and orderly fashion but decisively, and with no loose ends.

Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosphorum. (There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.)

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are no longer any rational points of view.

that's what Hiltler exemplified: not the triumph of evil but the failure of reason.

Had he been a lunatic or an intellectually honourable man who'd thought things through to their logical conclusion? And was there any difference?

Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast.

In so many ways I'm just thankful for common sense. Common sense keeps you out of trouble.

All that is real in human history becomes irrational in the process of time.

We don't see very far in the future, we are very focused on one idea at a time, one problem at a time, and all these are incompatible with rationality as economic theory assumes it.

History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis.

He is very fond of me, almost too fond.  I could do with less caressing and more rationality.  I should like to be less of a pet and more of a friend, if I might choose; but I won't complain of that: I am only afraid his affection loses in depth where it gains in ardour. 

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn't nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.

Believing in George Bush was so ludicrous that believing in God almost seems rational.

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn't nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.

see nothing attractive in behaving like a fool when you don't have to.

the moral world seemed some desperate dream of rationality that in this lush and fetid jungle had not the slightest chance.

Acaso no sería mejor el mundo si nunca más se quemara a nadie en el nombre de Dios? —pregunté—. ¿Si no se continuara creyendo que Dios puede ordenar al hombre hacer tal cosa a su semejante? ¿Cuál es el peligro de un mundo racional donde horrores como éste no se produzcan?

Over the years, Marius guarded his delicate rationality as a Vestal Virgin guards a sacred flame.

Your first mistake might be assuming that people are rational. Your second mistake could be assuming that people are eager for change. And the marketer's third mistake is assuming that once someone knows things the way you know them, they will choose what you chose.

If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you will probably make the wrong decision.

A man just realizing the fatal extent of his own folly was not likely to be all that rational.

Like most Hindus, I think I have. I am, as I told you, a believer, despite a brief period of schoolboy atheism — of the kind that comes with the discovery of rationality and goes with an acknowledgement of its limitations.