Quotes About Rationality

The ancient lizard mind lies below the mammalian mind, which lies below a primate mind, which is modified by a mind adapted to language, and since these layers have developed in response to differing evolutionary pressures, they often do not function efficiently together. Human civility tries to control ape dominance, human rationality tries to control mammalian sexuality, human social conscience tries to ameliorate reptilian greed, never with total success.

How do you know all this? Jeez, Tory, you're a kid. Act like it. (Geary) (Tory reached out and punched her on the arm.) Ow! What was that for? (Geary) Unexpected and irrational emotional outbursts. Isn't that what teenagers are supposed to do? Oh, and sulk. A lot. (Tory)

Sentir? ¿Por qué alguien en su sano juicio desearía eso? Los sentimientos son para tontos.

There are people who just can't handle life because they've thrown away too much of their reason.

Even the charities I give to are related to things that touch my life, like the Special Olympics. I'm not fully rational; I'm swayed by my biases and my emotions.

I believe that intelligence and rationality will always be primary no matter what shape sentient creatures take. To not think that would be to doubt the value of life itself.

If life teaches anything at all it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes that there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question.

Unreasonable is very relative.

In the past, when people criticized me for asking unexpected questions, I felt ashamed. Now I realize that normal people are acting in a superficial and often false manner. So rather than let them make me feel bad, I express my annoyance. It's my way of trying to strike a blow for logic and rationality.

It must be my logical consideration of a decision many see as purely intuitive or emotional that throws other people for a loop.

Math doesn't respond well to opinion.

I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health.

To an economist, no action is really a mistake, it's just an optimal answer to a different question.

The facts have to be determined by empirical evidence, and our thinking has then to conform to the facts, not the facts to our thinking

Logic is the anatomy of thought.

We are born to be, if we please, rational creatures, but it is use and exercise only that makes us so, and we are indeed so no farther than industry and application has carried us.

There are some Men of one, some but of two Syllogisms, and no more; and others that can but advance one step farther.

how vain, I say, it is to expect demonstration and certainty in things not capable of it; and refuse assent to very rational propositions, and act contrary to very plain and clear truths, because they cannot be made out so evident as to surmount every the least (I will not say reason, but) pretence of doubting.

There cannot be any thing so disingenuous, so misbecoming a gentleman or any one who pretends to be a rational creature, as not to yield to plain reason and the conviction of clear arguments." John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education.

Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.

God is a logical, rational being, though he does not necessarily conform to the laws of any human system of logic. The laws of logic are an aspect of his own character. Being logical is his nature and his pleasure. So the fact that he cannot be illogical is not a weakness. It may not be fairly described as a lack of power. Indeed it is a mark of his great power that he always acts and thinks consistently, that he can never be pushed into the inconsistencies that plague human life.

Men are only too ready to be swayed by senseless passion.

People] will do the rational thing, but only after exploring all other alternatives.

Who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense - from "Progress and it's Sustainability