Quotes About Irrationality

The undiminished irrationality of rational society encourages people to elevate religion into an end in itself, without regard to its content: to view religion as a mere attitude, as a quality of subjectivity. All this at the cost of religion itself. One needs only to be a believer—no matter what he believes in.

Die zivilisatorische Gesamttendenz der Konstellation von rationalen Mitteln und irrationalen Zwecken

Nature never allows man to understand it, however intelligent he thinks he may be. It tempts his reason by offering an initial success only to seduce and pull him on its side later, once for all. Finally, a man is left to sing the irrational songs of the nature!

The absurdity of believing that the decisions about who we love, and who we bind ourselves to, could be arrived at rationally? Or of assuming that we would be afforded a fair or natural death? Or did she mean the absurdity of having once believed in the possibility of dedicating one's life to anything beyond tomorrow, beyond just surviving? Or just the simple, long-standing absurdity of having lived a beginning that bore so little relation to the end?

There's no defense against stupidity.

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense. But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.

En esos momentos no es el dolor físico lo que más hiere, sino la humillación y la indignación provocadas por la injusticia, por la cruda irracionalidad de todo aquello.

It's what you feel, and guess what? Feelings are like three-year-olds. They're not rational. They're just there.

But I am thinking like a lover, or like an ass: which I suppose is pretty nearly the same.

Le idee sono spesso surrogate dalle emozioni. Sono più dure a morire, resistono meglio al tempo e tanto meglio quanto più sono irrazionali.

This stance makes no distinction between (1) the pluralistic standpoint of making sure people have equal rights and (2) the act of co-dependently making sure not to hurt anyone's feelings, however irrational they may be. We need to stop that nonsense. Getting your feelings hurt, quite frankly, is the price of living a in a free society.

To argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason is as futile as to administer medicine to the dead.

You're an actor, are you? Well, all that means is: you are irresponsible, irrational, romantic, and incapable of handling an adult emotion or a universal concept without first reducing it to something personal, material, sensational - and probably sexual!

I think we are intrinsically prone to being irrational and superstitious. A lot of it comes from our fear of the unknown and the fear of a lack of control over our fate.

It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.

What I mean to show is that the message of anti-populism is the same as ever: the lower orders, it insists, are driven by irrationality, bigotry, authoritarianism, and hate; democracy is a problem because it gives such people a voice. The difference today is that enlightened liberals are the ones mouthing this age-old anti-populist catechism.

plan? He wanted alpha males to populate the planet by impregnating multiple partners, so he gave females the gift of irrationality, able to morph the least little thing that happens anywhere in the world into being your fault, especially if it's your fault. Watch any nature show. The top lion is perfectly happy with a lioness, but then he inexplicably moves on. Why? She was trying to change him….

I hate jeans for no reason.

Every now and then, markets behave like schoolchildren. They overreact, they run around like crazy.

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

Religion is always an irrational enterprise, no matter how ennobling it may be to the human spirit.

Love, it seems, fits perfectly into no one of these molds for it may be all at once; a state of ecstasy, a state of joy, a state of disillusionment, a rational state or an irrational state

In other words we humans seek to outwit and control each other not just because of some tangible goal in the outside world that we're trying to achieve, but because of a lift we get psychologically. This is the reason we see so many irrational conflicts in the world both at the individual level and the level of nations.

other words we humans seek to outwit and control each other not just because of some tangible goal in the outside world that we're trying to achieve, but because of a lift we get psychologically. This is the reason we see so many irrational conflicts in the world both at the individual level and at the level of nations.