Quotes About Irrationality

The penultimate chapter will lay out how some of today's florid outbursts of irrationality may be understood as the rational pursuit of goals other than an objective understanding of the world.

loss aversion, the sunk-cost fallacy, and throwing good money after bad, is patently irrational, but it is surprisingly pervasive in human decision-making.

One of the most commonly cited human irrationalities is the sunk-cost fallacy, in which people continue to invest in a losing venture because of what they have invested so far rather than in anticipation of what they will gain going forward.

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

no se trata en absoluto de la voluntad de creer en cosas que sabes perfectamente que son falsas. Eso sería ignorancia o ceguera voluntaria. Se trata, por el contrario, de darse cuenta de que las irracionalidades trágicas de la vida tienen que compensarse con un compromiso igualmente irracional con la bondad esencial del Ser.

All religions are, in some basic sense, irrational.

As history reminds us again and again, wars are not always made on the basis of rational calculations: often the contrary.

Irrationality is the opposite of rationality: it means unreasonable, unfounded, ill-conceived. Irrationality is reason, practiced badly. A trance brought about by ecstatic dancing or drumming is certainly not rational, but it isn't irrational either. It's non-rational—it belongs to another category of experience entirely. Indeed, much of its value lies quite precisely in the fact that it takes us on a holiday away from reason—

a plan to spend a huge portion of your wealth during the last few weeks of life makes no sense. It's totally irrational.

Al mismo tiempo, pensar en la muerte puede ser angustiante, por lo que tendemos a evitar hacerlo, y nos comportamos como si nunca fuese a suceder. Seguimos postergando experiencias maravillosas, como si en nuestro último mes de vida pudiésemos embutir todas esas experiencias aplazadas a lo largo de nuestra vida. No es necesario decir que eso no es posible, por lo que es completamente irracional.

The most important thing when you study hypnosis is that you learn that humans are irrational. Until you understand that, hypnosis is hard to do... For me, it was this great awakening to understand that humans are deeply irrational, and it's probably the greatest influence on me in terms of my writing.

Mental illnesses are so strange. A physical problem we can understand. But when the mind works irrationally, well, by its very definition, the rational mind cannot truly relate.

Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.

I have lived lies. I have done it again and again. I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of anger, and I cannot admit the irrationality of love.-Marius

A dedication to irrationality grows more difficult to renounce with each reiteration of unreason, for the deluded must increasingly face the shame not only of his folly but of the misery it begets. As the tally grows, the likelihood of self-correction diminishes; and the committed one-worlder, now chained to his oars, must insulate himself against both reality and countervailing opinion. He does so handily by demonizing those trying to restore him to sanity.

Taught to believe that the mind, not the heart, is the seat of learning, many of us believe that to speak of love with any emotional intensity means we will be perceived as weak and irrational.

Of the stupidity of men there seems no end.

Look into the irrationality closely, with a determination not to respect it, and not to let it dominate you. Whenever it thrusts foolish thoughts or feelings into your consciousness, pull them up by the roots, examine them, and reject them.

One man likes oysters, and another likes pineapples; this distinguishes between them. But when they think about the multiplication table, provided they think correctly, there is no difference between them. The irrational separates us, the rational unites us.

Human nature is still, to a very great extent, regarded irrationally because it is pleasant to regard people as objects of praise and blame.

If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesn't get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational.

Needless to say, in a country where nothing makes sense only crazy acts do.

Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation...

El odio y la sinrazón tienen el mismo efecto que las epidemias.