Top 100 Quotes About Rationality
#1. The unthinking embrace of irrationality is literally madness. But embracing rationality while denying the existence of any mystery to life and its meaning - that is no less a form of madness than is eager devotion to unreason.
Dean Koontz
#2. A mother is an individual who'd go to any length for someone else, beyond rationality, beyond her physical body, her social bindings of state, country, her kind. That's the most horrifying individual you'll ever meet.
E.J. Koh
#3. The ontological concept of truth is in the centre of a logic which may serve as a model of pre- technological rationality. It is the rationality of a two-dimensional universe of discourse which, contrasts with the of thought and behavior that develop in the execution of the technological project.
Herbert Marcuse
#4. Hell, rationality itself - the exalted Human ability to reason - hadn't evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will.
Peter Watts
#5. Skepticism must go hand in hand with rationality. When theories are shown to be false, the correct thing to do is to move on.
Brian Cox
#6. The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers.
Zygmunt Bauman
#7. The absurd, with its rupture of rationality-of conventional ways of seeing the world-is in fact an accurate and a productive way of understanding the world.
William Kentridge
#8. It is telling commentary on economic orthodoxy that a whole subdiscipline--behavioral economics--and a raft of lab experiments are needed to show that humans often fail to behave with the rationality expected of them.
Kaushik Basu
#9. Politics is an art and not a science, and what is required for its mastery is not the rationality of the engineer but the wisdom and the moral strength of the statesman
Hans J. Morgenthau
#10. 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.
C. G. Jung
#11. Myth is necessary because reality is so much larger than rationality ... man is fundamentally mythic ... His real health depends upon his knowing and living his metaphysical totality.
Clyde S. Kilby
#12. In the Soul is the awaking of Consciousness: Consciousness sets itself up as Reason, awaking at one bound to the sense of its rationality: and this Reason by its activity emancipates itself to objectivity and the consciousness of its intelligent unity.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#13. To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions.
Robert M. Pirsig
#14. the orthogonality thesis speaks not of rationality or reason, but of intelligence.
Nick Bostrom
#15. The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.
Robert M. Pirsig
#16. Faith is not a rational thing, and yet to understand the universe, rationality alone will not give it to us. Our understanding of the universe must transcend the rational.
John Rhys-Davies
#17. How much rationality and higher protection there is in such self-deception, and how much falseness I still require in order to allow myself again and again the luxury of my sincerity.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#18. The sublime signals the limits of rationality - the 'sleep' of reason - and was best communicated by obscurity. So in the same spirit as the recipes 'to make a romance', 'seven types of obscurity' could be proposed for a Gothic novel:
Nick Groom
#19. The problem with us EU politicians is that we approach everything with cool rationality, and then wonder why we don't win people over emotionally.
Martin Schulz
#20. Mental or spiritual health, which is rationality, makes for progress, and the future demands greater and greater mental or spiritual health, greater and greater rationality. The brain must dominate and direct both the individual and society in the time to come, not the belly and the heart.
Jack London
#21. No vital Christianity is possible unless at least three aspects of it are developed. These are the inner life of devotion, the outer life of service, and the intellectual life of rationality.
D. Elton Trueblood
#22. Hatred is a form of faith, distilled by passion to remove all rationality.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
#23. At the end of all rationality, there is simply the need to decide and the faith to live through, to endure. Ruth
Ken Liu
#24. The outcome of a non-constant-sum game may be dictated by the individual rationality of the respective players without satisfying a criterion of collective rationality.
Anatol Rapoport
#25. ( ... ) rationality is a very narrowly restricted skill.
Noam Chomsky
#26. It is for this reason that rationality is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species ... even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.
Bertrand Russell
#27. Most of us fail to appreciate the extent to which our behavior is under situational control, because we prefer to believe that is all is internally generated. We wander around cloaked in an illusion of vulnerability, mis-armed with an arrogance of free will and rationality.
Philip Zimbardo
#28. Unrestricted laissez faire capitalism allocates resources in a most efficient way to satisfy human wants without regard to the rationality or morality of those desires.
Jerry Pournelle
#29. Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process.
Brian Eno
#30. Anger may bring extra energy, but it eclipses the best part of our brain: its rationality. The energy of anger is almost always unreliable.
Dalai Lama
#31. One of the essential differences between the liberal and conservative worldview is that the liberals believe in rationality, whereas conservative believe that human events are ordered by forces that are beyond the ability of our rational mind to understand or control.
Thom Hartmann
#32. A conviction akin to religious feeling of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a high order.
Albert Einstein
#33. The psychoanalytic liberation of memory explodes the rationality of the repressed individual. As cognition gives way to re-cognition, the forbidden images and impulses of childhood begin to tell the truth that reason denies.
Herbert Marcuse
#34. The term trans-rational is emblematic of a worldview within which rationality is included and transcended, not repressed or dismissed.
Gudjon Bergmann
#36. This doctrine of necessity in universality means that there is an essence to the universe which forbids relationships beyond itself, as a violation of its rationality. Speculative philosophy seeks that essence.
Alfred North Whitehead
#37. The perceived world is the always-presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value, and all existence.
Maurice Merleau Ponty
#38. But I guess the thing about fear is that it defies the laws of rationality. It creates its own laws instead.
David Levithan
#39. Voters thereby prove themselves bad and indeed corrupt judges of such issues and often they even prove themselves bad judges of their own long-run interests, for it is only the short-run promise that tells politically and only short-run rationality that asserts itself effectively.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
#40. There is nothing truthful, wise, humane, or strategic about confusing hostility to injustice and oppression, which is leftist, with hostility to science and rationality, which is nonsense.
Michael Albert
#41. Should we tolerate the blatant incorrectness of religion? Tolerating ignorance, superstition and stupidity will not provide for a healthy advancement of our society. Religion is cancer for modern thought, rationality, and even common sense.
Odin Zeus McGaffer
#42. Man is a mixture of desires that extend beyond his knowledge and often result in action conflicting with rationality.
Charles Lindbergh
#43. In love, there is no criticism. In love, there is no rationality
Antonia Michaelis
#44. It is important to reclaim for humanity the ground that has been taken from it by various arbitrarily narrow formulations of the demands of rationality
Amartya Sen
#45. I say we make our voices heard. For us, for our kids, I say that it is time to figure out a new approach to spirituality, one that honors rationality.
Gudjon Bergmann
#46. Regrettably, the Aryans who invaded India and Persia intermarried with the local natives they found in these lands, losing their light complexions and blond hair, and with them their rationality and diligence. The civilisations of India and Persia consequently declined.
Yuval Noah Harari
#48. Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.
Michael Shermer
#49. Logic. Rationality. Reasoning. Thought. Analysis. Calculation. Decision-making. All this is within the mind of a human being, correct? Humanity
Code Well Academy
#50. You stupid woman, if rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!
Tom Stoppard
#51. When faced with the illogical, one must expand the sphere of logic to include rules of logic for that which is not logic. This is the only possibility in a world that works according to the rules of rationality.
Judith Merkle Riley
#52. I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#53. By elevating the dictum of the market to the role of the sole criterion of rationality and efficiency, economics denies even all "respectability" to the distinction between essential and non-essential consumption, between productive and unproductive labor, between actual and potential surplus.
Paul A. Baran
#54. That's insane! But then, we're talking about a religious cult here, and cult followers aren't renowned for their rationality.
Jennifer Bosworth
#55. There's a beauty to forgiveness, especially forgiveness that goes beyond rationality. Unconditional love is an illogical notion, but such a great & powerful one
A. J. Jacobs
#56. The idea that reason and rationality is somehow separate from and antithetical to ones ' heart' is one of the most absurd theologies I have ever in my life heard."
~R. Alan Woods ("Just Keeping It Real", Copyright 2012)
R. Alan Woods
#57. Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface.
Karen Joy Fowler
#58. Imperfect knowledge, incomplete assessment of feedback, limited memory and recall, as well as poor problem-solving skills result in a form of rationality that attains not optimal decisions but more or less satisfactory compromises between conflicting constraints.
Manuel De Landa
#59. Happiness is man's greatest aim in life. Tranquility and rationality are the cornerstones of happiness.
Epicurus
#60. Who is the brave man
he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.
Geraldine Brooks
#61. But here's a little secret: man cannot live on rationality alone.
Jessa Crispin
#62. If it was as logical as that, I wouldn't continue to feel as bad as I do. I know what you're saying, and you're absolutely right in a way. But logic and rationality only go so far. Then you know what happens? Ha! Then your heart adds its two cents and everything reasonable goes right-out-the-window.
Jonathan Carroll
#63. I don't know whom shall I ask this question!
What is the rationality behind killing and murdering innocent people for the sake of your God?
M.F. Moonzajer
#64. Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.
Ayn Rand
#65. Believing that there is a conflict between rationality and spirituality is like believing that there is a conflict between knowledge and inspiration.
Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski
#66. I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.
Wernher Von Braun
#67. ...rationality can easily unveil the futility of life and lead to depression - as the stereotype of the extremely smart, but world-weary, educated man (often portrayed as a detective, philosopher, or doctor) suggests. As such, the rational worldview has its limits.
Gudjon Bergmann
#68. A single Lie That Must Be Protected can block someone's progress into advanced rationality. No, it's not harmless fun.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#69. Driven by a concern with institutions, we re-enter the world of the behavioralists. But we do so not in protest against the notion of rational choice, but rather in an effort to understand how rationality on the part of individuals leads to coherence at the level of society. (Bates 1988, p. 399)
Elinor Ostrom
#70. Rationality is a luxury. It can flourish only when protected and nourished...
Eva Blum
#71. The magical thinking encouraged by any belief in the supernatural, combined with the vilification of rationality and skepticism, is more conducive to conspiracy theories than it is to productive political debate.
Wendy Kaminer
#73. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.
Warren Buffett
#74. The only shibboleth the West has is science. It is the premise of modernity and it defines itself as a rationality capable of, indeed requiring separation from politics, religion and really, society. Modernisation is to work towards this.
Bruno Latour
#75. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself,
Robert M. Pirsig
#76. The reader who thinks that rationality does not require a definition should ponder the following: I'll give you a million dollars to do something irrational.
Lakshman Krishnamurthi
#77. It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality.
Gilles Deleuze
#78. The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality, though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber.
James Surowiecki
#79. The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.
Robert Greene
#80. This lack of translation is a mental handicap that comes with being a human; and we will only start to attain wisdom or rationality when we make an effort to overcome and break through it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#82. The rationality of our universe is best suggested by the fact that we can discover more about it from any starting point, as if it were a fabric that will unravel from any thread.
George Zebrowski
#83. I was a young girl, a virgin, and therefore men denied me rationality just as they denied it to all those who were not exactly like themselves, in all their unreason.
Angela Carter
#84. ...Belief is strong. Stronger than rationality. Fear, love hope -all rational emotions, but they sway people more fiercely than any fact-based argument.
Jessica Clare
#85. I thought about my own over-anxious brain, my own sort of madness. Was it a more powerful engine in my life than my rationality?
Jon Ronson
#86. Conviction, far from being based upon reason, is the enemy of reason; because rationality does not change, while convictions do, all the time.
Idries Shah
#87. The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits of rationality.
Blaise Pascal
#88. Over the past decades, students who have blindly followed their passion, without rational analysis of whether their choice of career truly was wise, have been more unhappy with their job choices than those who coupled passion with rationality.
Barbara Oakley
#89. I'm dependent on writing for a living, so really it's to my advantage to understand how the creative process works. One of the problems is, when you start to do that, in effect you're going to have to step off the edge of science and rationality.
Alan Moore
#90. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft.
Sam Harris
#91. Humans are fundamentally irrational. They use what precious rationality they have justifying their irrational behavior. A
Rita Mae Brown
#92. Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.
Roy Blount Jr.
#93. Their respect for the mystery
the half-grasped but never spoken idea that maybe, when you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there is no such thing as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery.
Stephen King
#94. You should accept the fact that there's no clear boundary between you and the horse, between rationality and instinct. It's not easy for a woman ...
Sibyl Von Der Schulenburg
#95. By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There's no specific line, as you know.
Leo Ornstein
#96. We violate the innocence of things in the name of rationality so we can wander about, uninterrupted, in our search for passion and sentiment.
Marlena De Blasi
#97. Rationality is the way to lead life. So high time,
let's stop feeding our dreams and shake hands with the reality.
Parul Wadhwa
#98. Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.
Ayn Rand
#99. Indeed, the highest pleasure of golf may be that on the fairways and far from all the pressures of commerce and rationality, we can feel immortal for a few hours.
Colman McCarthy
