Quotes About Rationality

Free" is a special price, and there has been all sorts of psychological research showing that people don't act rationally around it. We overestimate the value of free. We consume more of something than we should when it's free. We pressure others to consume it. Free warps our normal sense of cost vs. benefit, and people end up trading their personal data for less than its worth.

For Schaeffer rationality concerned the validity of thought, while rationalism concerned someone beginning with himself and his reason plus what he observes, without information from any other source, and coming to final answers in regard to truth, ethics, and reality.

For Schaeffer "rationality" means mankind thinking in a way that is not contrary to reason, or as he put it, "man's aspiration of reason is valid.

Schaeffer argues that this move—whereby mankind retained his rationalism but at the expense of rationality—was made out of desperation, but that this is characteristic of sinful man.

Placing himself, rather than God, at the center of the universe and making himself autonomous, man will give up his rationality so he can preserve his rationalism, his autonomy, and his rebellion against God.36

Thus all persons are capable of rational discourse, and as John Stott has pointed out, "one of the noblest features of the divine likeness in man is his capacity to think.

What happens if fully rational politicians compete for the support of irrational voters — specifically, voters with irrational beliefs about the effects of various policies? It is a recipe for mendacity.

It is irrational to be politically well-informed because the low returns from data simply do not justify their cost in time and other resources.

Irrationality in politics is not a puzzle. It is precisely what an economic theory of irrationality predicts.

Life is beyond the formal logic. For this reason it's not surprising that women who intuitively perceive the world seem illogical to us.

Why don't ye be sensible, Flask? it's easy to be sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible. I don't know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard.

it's easy to be sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible.

Para un ser sensible, la pena supone muchas veces dolor. Y cuando por fin uno se da cuenta de que esta pena no aporta una ayuda efectiva, el sentido común ordena al alma que se deshaga de ella.

If a drunkard in a sober fit is the dullest of mortals, an enthusiast in a reason-fit is not the most lively. And this, without prejudice to his greatly improved understanding; for, if his elation was the height of his madness, his despondency is but the extreme of his sanity.

Every time reason stands against the human, the human will stand against the reason

tan pronto como la razón esté en contra de un hombre, un hombre estará en contra de la razón. [...]" (Hobbes).

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons -- that's philosophy.

That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.

In that shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational.

What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult?

Daylight seemed then to be the physical manifestation of common sense.

the beauty of poetic apprehension, the infinite joy of reason.

En cet instant qui s'étiolait, il découvrit qu'il n'avait jamais éprouvé de haine envers quiconque jusqu'ici. C'était un sentiment aussi pur que l'amour, mais exempt de passion et d'une rationnalité glacée.

Rationalism is a blind faith.