Quotes About Rationality

We hold many dubious beliefs, in other words, not because they satisfy some important psychological need, but because they seem to be the most sensible conclusions consistent with the available evidence. People hold such beliefs because they seem, in the words of Robert Merton, to be the "irresistible products of their own experience."7 They are the products, not of irrationality, but of flawed rationality.

Sanity and apparent rationality are not the same, comrade.

the understanding is by the flame of the passions never enlightened, but dazzled

Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.

It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.

Error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.

I can imagine Herr Settembrini coming in suddenly and turning on the light, to let reason and convention reign—it is a weakness of his.

My skepticism is not based on religious belief, or on a belief in any definite alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. That is especially true with regard to the origin of life.

Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions — and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

Some things must be done on faith, but the most dangerous kind of faith is that which masquerades as "science.

Religious fervor breeds obsessive actions. Whether these actions are rational or irrational depends of your perspective.

In a situation in which every rational person is telling you a fact and you're the one who denies it, doesn't that make you the one most likely wrong?

It seems perverse to define intelligence as including rationality when no existing IQ test measures any such thing!

Dysrationalia is the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

Faith, wrote Origen (185–245), perhaps the first great Christian theologian, is 'useful for the multitude', a means of teaching 'those who cannot abandon everything and pursue a study of rational argument to believe without thinking out their reasons'.

The point of Zen is not to defy reason but to recognize the limitations of rationality.

We have been conditioned to treat rationality as sacred. But life itself is, in a very deep sense, absurd. It will not render itself to the tyranny of reason. Even the most wise cannot help but be flabbergasted by a three-year-old who keeps asking why. If you are not convinced, try asking yourself what is the reason for living. Life is basically a mystery that is not meant to be solved by our intellect. It cannot be "known" through the brain but through the heart.

There's a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons and reasons that sound good.

The things that mankind has tested and found right make for harmony and progress -- or peace; and the things it has found wrong hinder progress and make for discord. The right things lead to rational behavior -- such as the substitution of reason for force -- and so to freedom. The wrong things lead to brute force and slavery.

If you go to thinking take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love.

The more critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life becomes. When reason is overvalued, the individual suffers a loss. Relying more on facts and rationality than on imagination and theory detracts from the quality of a person's intellectual life.

Moderns consider themselves wholly rational, unemotional, scientific, and atheistic. Where earlier humanity had realized its unconscious through religion, moderns dismiss both religion and the unconscious as prescientific delusions. Instead, moderns proudly identify themselves with their ego and thereby boast of their omnipotence: "nowadays most people identify themselves almost exclusively with their consciousness, and imagine that they