Irrational Quotes - Page 8

• People are irrational. What I want to do is let's take the irrational aspects out of it and let's just break this down. And you and I, let's go and see if we can't master this thing, a few steps at a time without giving up your day job, without having to give up your whole life.

  Tony Robbins

  Jobs, Giving Up, People

  "Interview with Tony Robbins on His New Book, ‘Money: Master the Game’". Interview With Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 20, 2014.

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• Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldridge Cleaver is worth ten minutes of Roy Wilkins. The labor crises settled at the negotiating table is nothing compared to the confrontation that results in a strike ... normality has become the nemesis of network news.

  Spiro T. Agnew

  News, Tables, Controversial

  John R. Coyne, Spiro T. Agnew (1972). “The Impudent Snobs: Agnew Vs. the Intellectual Establishment”, New Rochelle, N.Y. : Arlington House

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• Reason ... contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order for "rational" is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Ignorance, Character, Men

  Herbert Marcuse (2012). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.142, Beacon Press

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• I would think that you are more fluent with the rational. It has its appeal. But the irrational permits a greater exercise of ... shall we say, power.

  Alan Lightman

  Exercise, Thinking, Permit

  Alan Lightman (2012). “Mr g: A Novel About the Creation”, p.25, Vintage

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• Lawyers have a way of seeing that sets them apart from the rest of us. In some way this special vision makes them invaluable, and in other ways, repulsive. Lawyers are much more focused on rational, logical, and objective criteria to the exclusion of the emotional, subjective, and sometimes irrational reponses to the world. Moreover, lawyers like to show no emotion, and possess a particular disdain for the emotions that are found in others, which has the quality of making them seem inhuman.

  Thane Rosenbaum

  Emotional, Vision, Special

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• September 11 was a day of de-Enlightenment. Politics stood revealed as a veritable Walpurgis Night of the irrational. And such old, old stuff. The conflicts we now face or fear involve opposed geographical arenas, but also opposed centuries or even millennia. It is a landscape of ferocious anachronisms: nuclear jihad in the Indian subcontinent; the medieval agonism of Islam; the Bronze Age blunderings of the Middle East.

  Martin Amis

  Night, September 11, Islam

  "The voice of the lonely crowd" by Martin Amis, www.theguardian.com. June 1, 2002.

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• Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, "Created sick Commanded to be well." And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Sick, Lines, Quiet

  Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.57, Basic Books

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• Ridiculous as our market volatility might seem to an intelligent Martian, it is our reality and everyone loves to trot out the 'quote' attributed to Keynes (but never documented): 'The market can stay irrational longer than the investor can stay solvent.' For us agents, he might better have said 'The market can stay irrational longer than the client can stay patient.'

  Jeremy Grantham

  Intelligent, Reality, Clients

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• In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Character, Average, Reactions

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.

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• To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing. It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, In what cases is liberty good and in what cases is it bad? would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of the problems which such a history would offer.

  James Fitzjames Stephen

  Fire, Liberty, Answers

  "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". Book by James Fitzjames Stephen, Ch.2, 1873-1874.

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• Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight altruism? These are only consequences, effects, not causes. I am out after the real cause, the real root of evil on earth the irrational.

  Ayn Rand

  Real, Philosophical, Fighting

  Ayn Rand (1997). “Letters of Ayn Rand”, p.382, Penguin

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• For the first time in history, men and women are seriously exploring the possibilities of relationships based on separateness rather than togetherness. Instead of clinging to Yahweh, to a rigid set of laws established by a jealous Father-God who will rant in fury if he is disobeyed, they are simply ignoring that ranting, walking away from it, and attempting to put their trust in the irrational. In other words, they are trying to live by the spirit.

  Marion Woodman

  Father, Jealous, Men

  Marion Woodman (1982). “Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride : a Psychological Study”

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• Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest...

  James Branch Cabell

  Race, Order, Romance

  "The Cream of the Jest: A Comedy of Evasions". Book by James Branch Cabell, 1917.

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• In the background lurks the scourge of international terrorism. There are people exercising power in a few countries and leading political factions in others who seem to be moved by narrow, brutal and irrational impulses. Their view of their own self-interest is so blinkered as to leave no space for purely human values, for peaceful negotiation or for economic advancement. They are bent on the destruction of the established order and of civilised ways of doing business. They must never be allowed to succeed.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Country, Exercise, Self

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• The authority of science promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies. Cartesian epistemology and classical ideals produced forms of rationality, scientificity and objectivity that, though efficacious in the quest for truth and knowledge, prohibited the intelligibility and legitimacy of black equality. In fact, to "think" such an idea was to be deemed irrational, barbaric or mad.

  Cornel West

  Thinking, Objectivity, Ideas

  "Prophesy Deliverance!". Book by Cornel West, 1982.

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• While Poe and the Symbolists were exploring the irrational in literature, Freud had begun to explore the resonant figure/ground double-plot of the conscious and unconscious.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Plot, Literature, Conscious

  "Laws of Media: The New Science". Book by Marshall McLuhan, co-written with Eric McLuhan, p. 52, 1988.

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• Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate, or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.

  William Blackstone

  Law, Optics, Action

  Sir William Blackstone, Edward Christian, John Frederick Archbold, Joseph Chitty (1827). “Commentaries on the Laws of England”, p.25

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• When irrational terror takes to itself the fiat of moral goodness somebody has to die. ... No man lives who has not got a panic button, and when it is pressed by the clean white hand of moral duty, a certain murderous train is set in motion.

  Arthur Miller

  Men, White, Hands

  Arthur Miller (2016). “Collected Essays: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.157, Penguin

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• The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means that in social processes, as in economic processes, it is not only impossible to attain perfection but irrational to seek perfection- or even to seek the best possible result in each separate instance.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mean, Perfection, Impossible

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• Idiosyncratic belief systems which are shared by only a few adherents are likely to be regarded as delusional. Belief systems which may be just as irrational but which are shared by millions are called world religions.

  Anthony Storr

  World Religions, May, Belief

  Anthony Storr (2015). “Feet Of Clay: The Power and Charisma of Gurus”, p.203, Simon and Schuster

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• Achieving success as an actor has not been easy for me. My biggest, probably most irrational complaint has been that I've had to work harder for what I've gotten. I've seen other people with nepotism or wealth or cheesy good looks on their side who've had it easy...

  James Woods

  Hard Work, People, Cheesy

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Society doesn't need that everybody is behaving in the full normal way... like people in a Buddhist monastery... But eccentricity may also connect with the irrational.

  John Muir

  Buddhist, People, Needs

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• Love is an irrational force, making humans do all sorts of strange and wonderful things like write poetry and take up the ukulele.

  Amy Dickinson

  Women, Writing, Love Is

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• It is not intuitive ease I am after, but rather a point of view which is sufficiently definite to clear up some difficulties, and to be criticized in rational terms. (Bohr's complementarity cannot be so criticized, I fear; it can only be accepted or denounced - perhaps as being ad hoc, or as being irrational, or as being hopelessly vague.)

  Karl Popper

  Science, Views, Ease

  Karl Popper, W.W. Bartley, III (2013). “Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics: From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.103, Routledge

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• [T]he only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of the contradictory, the impossible, the irrational, and thus shake the concept of rationality in his victim.

  Ayn Rand

  Real, Men, Thinking

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.374, Hamilton Books

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