Irrational Quotes - Page 10

• Who would seriously want to listen to anything emanating from a quasi-chimpanzee's irrational bundle of mental accidents and energies?

  David A. Noebel

  Energy, Want, Bundles

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• A failure to understand something does not mean it is irrational. It may simply mean that it lies on the far side of our limited abilities to take things in and make complete sense of them.

  Alister E. McGrath

  Lying, Mean, Doe

  Alister E. McGrath (2014). “The Living God: A Guide for Study and Devotion”, p.97, Westminster John Knox Press

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• Fundamental assumptions in general and scientific assumptions in particular are so hard to overturn because they are based on belief. Beliefs are so hard to overcome because they are irrational and therefore do not yield to logical argument.

  Thomas Campbell

  Yield, Logical Arguments, Overcoming

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• One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns-about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering-in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. We desperately need a public discourse that encourages critical thinking and intellectual honesty. Nothing stands in the way of this project more that the respect we accord religious faith.

  Sam Harris

  Spiritual, Religious, Honesty

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• 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

  Men, Soul, Body

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• Souls are punished when they have gone forth from the body, some wandering among us, some going to hot or cold places of the earth, some harassed by spirits. Under all circumstances they suffer with the irrational part of their nature, with which they also sinned. For its sake there subsists that shadowy body which is seen about graves, especially the graves of evil livers.

  Sallust

  Evil, Soul, Suffering

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• [D]rawing up 'secret war plans' for a possible attack on Iraq wasn't irrational. The low-level war against Saddam was 12 years old, with no end in sight. American and British pilots were getting shot at, sanctions weren't working, and Bush was getting warnings that Saddam had all those terrible weapons and would use them against America. Bush would have been a fool not to draw up plans. Gee, wait till the critics find out that FDR, without ever informing the media, was plotting to fight Japan and Germany before Pearl Harbor.

  John Leo

  War, Fighting, Japan

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• While the apostles of the new so-called "behavioral" theory present ample evidence of how often human beings make irrational financial decisions, it remains to be seen whether these decisions lead to predictable errors that create systematic mispricings upon which rational investors can readily and economically capitalize.

  John C. Bogle

  Errors, Decision, Investing

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• Excessive or irrational schedules are probably the single most destructive influence in all of software

  Capers Jones

  Schedules, Influence, Software

  Capers Jones (2008). “Applied Software Measurement: Global Analysis of Productivity and Quality”, p.403, McGraw Hill Professional

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• God created the first pair equal in rights, possessions, and authority. He bequeathed the earth to them as a joint inheritance; gave them joint dominion over the irrational creation; but none over each other.

  Antoinette Brown Blackwell

  Equality, Rights, Inheritance

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• The irrational may be attractive in the abstract, but not in cab drives, dinner guests, or elderly relatives.

  Mason Cooley

  Elderly, Dinner Guests, May

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• Who is more irrational, the guy who believes in a God he can't see, or a guy who's offended by a God he doesn't believe in?

  Brad Stine

  Believe, Guy, Offended

  Brad Stine (2006). “Live from Middle America: Rants from a Red-State Comedian”, Hudson st Press

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• There are irrational fears. If you see a woman wearing a hijab and fear is your first thought, something's really wrong.

  Hamza Yusuf

  Firsts, Hijab, Irrational Fear

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• North Koreans are irrational to some extent, but I don't think they're totally irrational. I think they watch American cable channels. I think they watch the European cable channels. I think they, their decision makers keep up more than we know. And I think they want us to think they're a little crazy.

  William J. Clinton

  Crazy, Thinking, Decision

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.

  George Santayana

  Should Have, Illusion, Abandon

  George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2015). “The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Art, Volume VII, Book Four”, p.136, MIT Press

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• Every discovery contains an irrational element or a creative intuition.

  Karl Popper

  Discovery, Creative, Intuition

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.8, Routledge

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• There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Intuition, Age

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• Fear of death is understandable, being that we are all going to die, but fear of life and suffering is more of an irrational fear because it's something that can be avoided. The torturous part is that suffering can be avoided if you have good luck. That's somewhat out of our hands, but is it? I don't know. "Is bad luck self-harm by another name?"

  Steve Toltz

  Good Luck, Suffering, Bad Luck

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I don't think we are all irrational every time we fail to see through an argument in a book, but suppose it's true about you. You are still more rational than you think you are. You are irrational in a minor way - believing a misguided theory of the nature of rationality - but rational in a major way - you respond well to probabilistic evidence as you go through the day.

  Nomy Arpaly

  Believe, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• When you find yourself reluctant to sit on a chair because it had unexpectedly collapsed in the past you might shake your head and think "there, I'm so irrational!". But your reluctance to sit on a probably rickety chair is not irrational - you think it's irrational because you have a false view of what irrationality is.

  Nomy Arpaly

  Past, Thinking, Finding Yourself

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• One of the things I did during my 17 years as a psychiatric social worker was go around and find people with mental crutches, and every time I found one, I kicked those goddamn crutches until they flew. You know what happened? Every single one of those people has been able to walk without the crutches better, in fact. Were they giving up anything intrinsically valuable? Just their irrational reliance upon superstitions and supernatural nonsense. Perhaps this sort of claptrap was good for the Stone Age, when people actually believed that if they prayed for rain they would get it.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Giving Up, Rain, Years

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• There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women or that men are more willing to surrender their irrational beliefs. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

  Albert Ellis

  Sex, Men, Belief

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• When people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed.

  Albert Ellis

  People, Belief, Preference

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• Beginning in the 1960s, many studies showed that people who hold what we call irrational beliefs are significantly more disturbed than when they don't hold them, and the more strongly they hold them, the more disturbed they tend to be.

  Albert Ellis

  People, Belief, Study

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• People are terrified of other people or difficult projects because they tell themselves that they could fail or be rejected. Failure can lead to sorrow, regret, frustration and annoyance - all healthy, negative feelings without which people couldn't exist. But then they add, "I absolutely must succeed and must be loved by significant persons, and if I don't, it's terrible and I'm no good." Those are irrational beliefs. As long as people keep them, they'll be terrified of life and will put themselves down when they get rejected.

  Albert Ellis

  Regret, Frustration, Long

  "The Prince of Reason". Interview with Robert Epstein, www.psychologytoday.com. January 1, 2001.

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