Quotes About Being Rational

#1. What is it about spirituality that doesn't resonate with our core value of being rational? What makes it so difficult for us to maintain our level-headed (and slightly jaded) mindset while being spiritual at the same time?

Gudjon Bergmann

#2. Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

#3. If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.

Etgar Keret

#4. When the experts' scientific knowledge is legitimated in terms of being rational, logical, efficient, educated, progressive, modern, and enlightened, what analogies can other segments of society . . . utilize to challenge them?

Martin Guevara Urbina

#5. But being rational about it didn't cure it.

Colum McCann

#6. Being rational is a moral Imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be.

Charlie Munger

#7. I hate when I break my own rules. What's the point of me being rational if I flail around like a clown?

Jesse Ball

#8. There is a grotesquerie to grief as well. You lose the sense of your existence being rational, or justifiable. You feel absurd.

Julian Barnes

#9. I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear, or anything but that vain animal who is so proud of being rational.

John Wilmot

#10. Being rational - along with being clear and honest - are important if we are to create the needed shift in fundamental thinking necessary to make it possible to pull this world back from the brink of multiple disasters on ecological, cultural, political, and economic fronts.

Robert Jensen

#11. Being rational is extremely easy for those who try to recognize an absence of the soul.

Alpha Jan

#12. Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.

Michael Shermer

#13. Any time there's something so ridiculously dangerous that no rational human being would try it, they send for me.'
Garion

David Eddings

#14. Every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.

Marcus Aurelius

#15. Since reason is man's basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

Ayn Rand

#16. Serious rational criticism is so rare that it should be encouraged. Being too ready to defend oneself is more dangerous than being too ready to admit a mistake.

Karl Popper

#17. Respect for the dignity of others includes treating them as rational creatures capable of being persuadad by rational argument, even in the face of frequent evidence to the contrary.

Richard John Neuhaus

#18. I think 'vegan' is a beautiful word. It is more than just a description for our diet. I see it as a visible template for an ethical, healthy, responsible, and rational life. Because it describes our character, it says we do not take the life of another living being to satisfy our wants.

Philip Wollen

#19. You're saying, "I'm gonna do this thing," and you have to be aware, as a rational human being, that you may not be allowed back in.

M. Night Shyamalan

#20. Another writer argued in an 1895 issue of the Cosmopolitan that by riding a bicycle, a woman would "become mistress of herself," transformed into a "rational, useful being restored to health and sanity.

Frances E. Willard

#21. What counts now are the value-less facts, the material and the rational. All else is regarded with condescension as being of only sentimental value.

Jean Gebser

#22. The Christian image of God is that of a rational being who believes in human progress.

Rodney Stark

#23. In fact, in more cases than not, when we are rational, we're actually unhappy. Emotion is good; passion is good. Being into what we're into, provided that it's a healthy pursuit, it's a good thing.

Frank Luntz

#24. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.

Karl Popper

#25. Nothing could be more humiliating to a rational creature than being required to encourage the development of a Base conditional reflex by stopping at a red light when there was not an earthly soul around, heeled or wheeled.

Vladimir Nabokov

#26. Irrationality is the exclusive preserve of humans as among all creatures only we have the power to rationalise, that being the art of packaging patently irrational as apparently rational.

R.N. Prasher

#27. The sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness.

Immanuel Kant

#28. The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft

#29. Individuals of one species are the same in essence or substance. Two human beings differ from one another in matter, but are the same in essence, as being both rational animals. The essential human quality which distinguishes the species Man from all other species is identical in both.

Aldous Huxley

#30. Look, fear's not always rational, okay? Anyway, there's a difference between being afraid and being a coward. At least there was one thing I could take comfort in: if you're afraid, you must still be a little bit human.

Danielle Paige

#31. Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt.

Nathaniel Branden

#32. Being so rational, we have created a very simple version of ourselves.

Marcel Wanders

#33. True, (Jefferson's) rational religion ran in rivulets outside the American mainstream, but heterodoxy is faith of a different form and, like orthodoxy, should be recognized for what it is: a way of being religious.

Stephen R. Prothero

#34. The religious guilt cycle interferes with learning and change. Rather than learning who he is as a sexual being, he measures himself against an impossible religious sexual standard and always comes up short. Absent religion, many unrestricted people can deal with their behavior in a rational manner.

Darrel Ray

#35. For though the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men, being biased by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases.

John Locke

#36. God forgive me for having thought it possible that a schoolmaster could be out and out a rational being.

Walter Scott

#37. It was on the order of coin or stamp collecting; no rational explanation could ever be given. And high prices were being paid by wealthy collectors.

Philip K. Dick

#38. ...Act upon a maxim which, at the same time, involves its own universal validity for every rational being.

Immanuel Kant

#39. I offer a genuine insight into how you can, and should, be a rational, science-believing human being and at the same time know that you are also an immortal spiritual being, a spark of God. I propose a worldview that offers a way out of the hate and fear-driven violence engulfing the planet.

Bernard Haisch

#40. Why? What's wrong with being emotional about this? why is that a negative thing? Why isn't the emotional decision the right decision? asked the woman who wasn't crying.

Lisa Genova

#41. Walk into any mosque, temple, church, or synagogue and you will find differing examples, different ways of interpreting God. The One True God is hard to find when a mishmash of human traits is constantly being projected.

Gudjon Bergmann

#42. Fear was a devastating thing. It gripped you to the point of being completely incapacitated and swallowed every rational thought that was your given right. The most frightening part of fear was that it had the potential to completely destroy you if you let it.

Rachel Brookes

#43. There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man's Life is its standard of value.
All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.

Ayn Rand

#44. We do not respect people's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons. If my reasons are good enough for believing what I believe, you will helplessly believe what I believe. I will give you my reasons and reasons are contagious. That is what it is to be a rational human being.

Sam Harris

#45. A man who does not question his own judgment, society, and who flourishes between deceit and bewilderment, fails his moral responsibility as a rational being.

Duop Chak Wuol

#46. Being the rational animal, man must be capable of thinking if he really wants to. Still, it may be that man wants to think, but cannot.

Martin Heidegger

#47. The sight of a being who is not graced by any touch of a pure and good will but who yet enjoys an uninterrupted prosperity can never delight a rational and impartial spectator. Thus a good will seems to constitute the indispensable condition of being even worthy of happiness.

Immanuel Kant

#48. How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?

Mary Wollstonecraft

#49. It is only the belief and the confidence we have in a God why man is able to understand his own social institutions, and move and live like a rational human being.

Marcus Garvey

#50. In a way, one gets stability from being able to order the rational mind.

Richard Gere

#51. It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being.

Lauren Oliver

#52. Animal liberationists do not separate out the human animal, so there is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals.

Ingrid Newkirk

#53. I should have thought of this years ago.
But that was the problem with being sane. Sane people played by the rules. They looked for rational explanations and solutions in an insane universe.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#54. Respect for another man's opinion is worthy. It is the realization that any opinion is valuable, for it is the sign of a rational being.

Sargent Shriver

#55. Regarding yourself as a highly rational and compassionate being does not make you rational and compassionate in all circumstances.

Ian McEwan

#56. To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.

Epictetus

#57. We cannot discover ourselves without first discovering the universe, the earth, and the imperatives of our own being. Each of these has a creative power and a vision far beyond any rational thought or cultural creation of which we are capable.

Thomas Berry

#58. They wonder what is wrong with our country, but isn't it fairly obvious that if children are being treated like animals instead of rational beings, as adults they'll respond like monkeys?

Wen Spencer

#59. Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#60. The paralyzing fear of being lost is fed solely by the irrational fear that we will never be found.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#61. A rational human being of the civilized world would be like the swan that can draw the milk from a mixture of milk and water, leaving aside the water.

Abhijit Naskar

#62. [13] Everything in nature works according to laws. Only a rational being has a will - which is the ability to act according to the thought of laws, i.e. to act on principle. To derive actions from laws you need reason, so that's what will is - practical reason.

Anonymous

#63. Poor thing. If she wasn't being thrown into trees or attacked by his kin, she was being mystically flung to the ground by his old, terrifying great-great-aunt.
It was really going to be impossible to talk to Braith in a rational, calm manner after all this.

G.A. Aiken

#64. Then the imitative poet who aims at being popular is not by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect the rational principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily imitated? Clearly. And

Plato

#65. Nonsense which it would be shameful for a reasonable being to write, speak or hear spoken can be sung or listened to by that same rational being with pleasure and even with a kind of intellectual conviction.

Aldous Huxley

#66. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.

John Stuart Mill

#67. Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific. It is, therefore, rational to accept it hypothetically.

Bertrand Russell

#68. Though adversity is the fertile soil in which the human spirit best grows, we loathe it still. I do not see how it can be otherwise, for no rational being seeks out pain and misfortune. Still, I cannot help but wonder if it is not somehow wrong to enjoy the fruit but curse the tree.

Richard Paul Evans

#69. Indeed, so far from being humorous, the male American is the most abnormally serious creature who ever existed.. It is only fair to admit that he can exaggerate, but even his exaggeration has a rational basis. It is not founded on wit or fancy; it does not spring from any poetic imagination.

Oscar Wilde

#70. Lies don't make you happy. They just make you lie about being happy.

Stefan Molyneux

#71. Someday we may look back on this era as a time when rational compromises might have enhanced both security and liberty, but those compromises were refused because each side was so busy self-righteously being right.

David Brin

#72. In one point of view, Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble.

John Ruskin

#73. ...we'd be okay. Not perfect, not entirely healthy, not even rational where our love for one another was concerned. Just okay. Merely sufficient, at best. But there'd be only acceptance - never shame - in being two divine failures as we emerged from slumber, perfectly flawed, and wide awake.

AngstGoddess003

#74. Man, being not only a religious, but also a social being, requires for the promotion of his rational happiness religious institutions, which, while they give a proper direction to devotion, at the same time make a wise and profitable improvement of his social feelings.

Hosea Ballou

#75. Man, and in general every rational being, exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means for arbitrary use by this or that will: he must in all his actions, whether they are directed to himself or to other rational beings, always be viewed at the same time as an end.

Immanuel Kant

#76. The great advantage of being human is that we can employ rational thought and resolve to change our circumstances.

Mariella Frostrup

#77. The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being

Thomas Jefferson

#78. Americans should know that Iranians are just as decent, human and rational as other human beings. Sadly, the mainstream media in the U.S. regularly fails to recognize and reflect this.

Mohammad Marandi

#79. I invent, find, and borrow ways of making painterly statements, which reflect my person to the extent that I am able to reach into that core of my being. It's a kind of self-analysis that requires a balance between the rational and the intuited.

Thornton Willis

#80. It is the fertile hallucination that makes paint so compelling. Paint is like the numerologist's numbers, always counting but never adding up, always speaking but never saying anything rational, always playing at being abstract but never leaving the clotted body.

James Elkins

#81. It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

Aristotle.

#82. She realised with every inch of her being that she wanted Freya; she was in love with Freya. Her mind, with its perfectly rational arguments, had list the battle with her heart. She felt it. It was real. The conflict was torture.

Kiki Archer

#83. My wife has told me since that I was hungover every mornng until about two in the afternoon, and from five until midnight I was drunk out of my mind. So she says there was this period of about three hours when she could talk to me like a rational human being ...

Stephen King

#84. Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

Immanuel Kant

#85. If the transmigration of a soul takes place into a rational being, it simply becomes the soul of that body. But if the soul migrates into a brute beast, it follows the body outside, as a guardian spirit follows a man. For there could never be a rational soul in an irrational being.

Sallust

#86. I watched her cry
drown herself in a flood of tears. It is a great thing to be in the presence of a rational being who cries. A weak, broken creature shedding tears makes the same impression as an all-powerful god to whom one prays. In her weakness and defeat Amy was above human power.

Henri Barbusse

#87. Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.

Samuel Johnson

#88. Despite all the lunacy of the last century, all the absurdity of war and genocide, we believe that humans being are rational and are made to seek the truth.

Timothy Radcliffe

#89. Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of.

Richard Whately

#90. Because God is a rational being and the universe is his personal creation, it necessarily has a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting increased human comprehension. This is the key to many intellectual undertakings, among them, the rise of science.

Rodney Stark

#91. A guest should be permitted to graze, as it were, in the pastures of his host's kindness, left even to his own devices, like a rational being, and handsomely neglected.

Louise Imogen Guiney

#92. True generosity is a duty as indispensably necessary as those imposed upon us by the law. It is a rule imposed upon us by reason, which should be the sovereign law of a rational being.

Oliver Goldsmith

#93. I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen, and heard in a manner which should make unbelief impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake.

Augustus De Morgan

#94. Being able and willing to complain is what makes us rational and moral animals, capable of seeing and articulating the difference between how things are and how they should be.

Julian Baggini

#95. Some things in life could not be solved or even contemplated by a rational mind. Roger's mind, however, had ceased being anywhere near rational about half a bottle of Grand Marnier ago.

Andrew Barrett

#96. Just as nature takes every obstacle, every impediment, and works around it
turns it to its purposes, incorporates it into itself, so, too, a rational being can turn each setback into raw material and use it to achieve its goal.

Marcus Aurelius

#97. Beware of being too rational. In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn't become king. He gets lynched.

Aldous Huxley

#98. I was entering into a moral universe in which I would be related to every other rational being, and in which whole masses of us, as thick as swarming bees, would drag one another along towards some common end of good or evil, peace or war.

Thomas Merton

#99. Prior to postmodernism, it was all but impossible to claim that one was a cultural Christian, Jew, or Muslim. There was no such thing. Now, being culturally religious is a widely accepted stance.

Gudjon Bergmann

#100. Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death.

Ayn Rand