Quotes About Rationality

Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Holmesian philosophy more apt: 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sometimes I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is a method in his madness.

There's no reason why women shouldn't behave like rational beings," Simon asserted stolidly. Poirot said drily: "Quite frequently they do. That is even more upsetting!

To say a man does mad things because he is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in his action as a sane man--given his peculiar biased point of view. For example, if a man insists on going out and squatting about in nothing but a loin cloth his conduct seems eccentric in the extreme. But once you know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is Mahatma Gandhi, then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable and logical.

With method and logic one can accomplish anything!

It is the brain, the little grey cells" — he topped his forehead — "on which one must rely. The senses mislead.

There's no reason why women shouldn't behave like rational beings," Simon asserted stolidly. Poirot said dryly: "Quite frequently they do. That is even more upsetting!

A madman is as logical and reasoned in his actions as a sane man—given his peculiar biased point of view.

Here we seem to have arrived at the terminus of Buddhist cosmology as a practical philosophy. It is a point all ancient views of the universe have finally reached. As knowledge is disseminated in ever-greater amounts, people have sought out the rational and overturned old dogmas.

The rule of reason is the true sovereign in the American system.

It is a necessary condition of rationality that a man shall formulate his beliefs in such a way that it is clear what evidence would be evidence against them and that he shall lay himself open to criticism and refutation ... But to foreclose on tolerance is precisely to cut oneself off from such criticism and refutation. It is gravely to endanger one's own rationality by not admitting one's own fallibility.

It is only by participation in a rational, practice-based community that one becomes rational.

The mock rationality of the debate conceals the arbitrariness of the will and power at work in its resolution. It

That law is one and the same for all rational beings; it has nothing to do with local particularity or circumstance. The good man is a citizen of the universe; his relation to all other collectivities, to city, kingdom or empire is secondary and accidental. Stoicism thus invites us to stand against the world of physical and political circumstance at the very same time that it requires us to act in conformity with nature.

There is no practical rationality then without the virtues of character. The vicious argue unsoundly from false premises about the good, while the akratic ignores the sound arguments available to him. Only the virtuous are able to argue soundly to those conclusions which are their actions […]

The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives.

We have too many intellectuals who are afraid to use the pistol of common sense.

My purpose is to make a movie to make you warm. To give you some heat. Now, this rational world has become a place where only what is cool is good. Do you cut the movie on the basis of the beat of modernity or the basis of the beat of your own heart?

Where's the logic in dying?

Do not bring violence to the sword. Do not bring heartbreak or anger or passion. You hold in your hand the steel of rationality.

You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

We think intelligently yet act foolishly!