Quotes About Rational

An audience that is unwilling to suspend its own presuppositions and biases while considering an opposed (or even unopposed) viewpoint not only frustrates the function of extended argument but effectively denies its own beliefs a rational basis.

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

In a manner of speaking, the fact that humankind itself is unpredictable is the quintessential stumbling-block for archaeologists. We have to assume that the people whose dwelling-places, artefacts, lives even, we are dealing with were rational, integrated, sane and sensible human beings. Then we look around at our own contemporaries and wonder how this belief can possibly be sustained.

This is because Spirit is as much the Irrational as it is the Rational. Academicians need to show some humility in the face of what will always be Irrational. They only see half the picture.

Unfortunately, many scientists have lost sight of the fact that science is based on a faith that there exist rational, discoverable laws. Indeed, scientists have their own faith. For example, one of Scientism's dogma is that all of reality came to being from nothing, and then this nothing exploded and created all of reality. A more fantastical and fable-like story could not be imagined!

the rational solution, as yet unsupported by the emotional drive which would make it a common faith, a cardinal necessity not to be denied, drifts in the doldrums, while the hysterical crew wring their hands and pray for a fair wind, instead of manning the boats and rowing the ship out to the Trades.

It may also be noted in passing that both the theist and the Agnostic actually do deny the existence of particular gods without the least hesitation. No rational Agnostic would hesitate to deny the existence of Jupiter, Javeh, Allah, or Brahma. No Christian would hesitate to deny the existence of the gods of a tribe of savages.

If you're a rational being, don't make such ridiculous excuses. Habit! If I was to get a habit (as you call it) of walking on the ceiling, like the flies, I should hear enough of it, I daresay. It appeared so probable that such a habit might be attended with some degree of notoriety, that Mr Chick didn't venture to dispute the position. 'Bow-wow-wow!

Is our rational and self-reliant generation really supposed to accept the idea that God the Almighty not only created the universe but, interestingly enough, also has a stake in our lives?

Only direct experience of the peaceful internal state will remove doubt and provide enlightenment—not in a spooky, out-of-this-world kind of way, but in a rational, let's-turn-on-the-lights sort of way.

Civilisations as yet have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase. A civilisation involves fixed rules, discipline, a passing from the instinctive to the rational state, forethought for the future, an elevated degree of culture—all of them conditions that crowds, left to themselves, have invariably shown themselves incapable of realising.

In liberation theology the way to rational talk of God is located within a broader and more challenging course of action: the following of Jesus.

The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.

And, right or wrong, rational or absurd, Oscar Wilde is always fascinating. He is the man you hope will walk into the room and come to sit at the spare place at your table.

cuerdos," he says. They're sane.

Our policy is impossible to justify on rational grounds, which is why we've started invoking national security and other shibboleths.

The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth.

Ever since the Enlightenment, people thought that we were living in a rational universe. They thought that God was a mathematician and that the function of the scientist was to figure out the mathematical rules whereby the universe was created.

But it is strange how many rational beings believe the ultimate truths of the universe to be reducible to patterns on a blackboard.

The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.

Artists are those people who sit at the intersection between the known and unknown, the rational and irrational, coming to terms with some of the confusing histories we, as artists, deal with.

Troubles always seemed more severe after the sun went down. Even irrational worries and fears could seem perfectly logical at midnight.

I'm not starry eyed, and I'm not money crazy.

But I still read Shaw on a regular basis. What I love is the nakedness of the polemic and the irresistible good humour. For me, 'Major Barbara' is the greatest of all the plays in that it starts from the rational and proceeds to the ecstatic in a spectacular way, and leaves you very confused if you cling to Euclidean logic.