Irrational Quotes - Page 12

• I knew all the time I was going to get through the war. It was completely irrational, a silly idea, but I was not going to lie down and get myself killed. I was going to get out of it.

  Abraham Pais

  War, Lying, Silly

  "To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue" edited by Ellen Land-Weber, Part I, Holland, Ch. 1, (p. 50), 2000.

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• Flesh-eating by humans is unnecessary, irrational, anatomically unsound, unhealthy, unhygienic, uneconomic, unaesthetic, unkind and unethical. May I elaborate?

  Helen and Scott Nearing

  Vegetarianism, Flesh Eating, May

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• If you want to - if you want to engage in conspiracy theories that the White House and the vice president intended no one to ever know - like "The New York Times" - we would have been kept in the dark forever. I just think that's completely irrational.

  Kate O'Beirne

  New York, Dark, Thinking

  "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, www.nbcnews.com. February 17, 2006.

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• In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth, to explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Struggle, Men, Giving

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• Our enemies may be irrational, even outright insane, driven by nationalism, religion, ethnicity or ideology. They do not fear the United States for its diplomatic skills or the number of automobiles and software programs it produces. They respect only the firepower of our tanks, planes and helicopter gunships.

  Ronald Reagan

  Skills, Numbers, Ethnicity

  Ronald Reagan (1998). “A Shining City: The Legacy of Ronald Reagan”

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• All great art contains an element of the irrational.

  Edith Sitwell

  Art, Elements, Great Art

  Edith Sitwell (Dame), Elizabeth Salter, Allanah Harper (1976). “Edith Sitwell: fire of the mind : an anthology”, Michael Joseph

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• Parenting is not logical. If it were, we would never have to read a book, never need a family therapist, and never feel the urge to call a close friend late at night for support after a particularly trying bedtime scene. . . . We have moments of logic, but life is run by a much larger force. Life is filled with disagreement, opposition, illusion, irrational thinking, miracle, meaning, surprise, and wonder.

  Jeanne Elium

  Running, Book, Night

  Jeanne Elium, Don Elium (2011). “Raising a Daughter: Parents and the Awakening of a Healthy Woman”, p.223, Celestial Arts

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• What good your beautiful proof on the transcendence of Pi: Why investigate such problems, given that irrational numbers do not even exist?

  Leopold Kronecker

  Beautiful, Science, Irrational Numbers

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• Superstition is the irrational belief that an object or behavior has the power to influence an outcome, when there's no logical connection between them. Most of us aren't superstitious - but most of us are a 'littlestitious.'

  Gretchen Rubin

  Connections, Outcomes, Superstitions

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• Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everythingand that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.

  William Barrett

  Men, Hands, Greek

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• The insane have achieved political respectability while the sane act too good for it all. The irrational celebrate while the rational act bored and above-it-all.

  Maureen Dowd

  Bored, Political, Insane

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• If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of acompletely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.

  Albert Camus

  Character, Men, History

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.221, Vintage

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• The wind shifts like this:
  Like a human without illusions,
  Who still feels irrational things within her.

  Wallace Stevens

  Wind, Illusion, Feels

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.83, Vintage

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• At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.

  Herman Melville

  Life, Views, Years

  Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.454, Northwestern University Press

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• The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Running, Truth, Honesty

  Sydney J. Harris (1986). “Clearing the ground”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• ... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.

  Robert Musil

  Life, World, Emotion

  Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.88, University of Chicago Press

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• Horror is one of the few genres - romance and comedy are the other two that come to mind - that's all emotion-driven. It's not a rational genre, like science fiction is. It's irrational by nature. And it is capable of exploring all aspects of human experience.

  Stephen R. Bissette

  Two, Romance, Mind

  Interview with Chris Dahlen, www.avclub.com. July 23, 2009.

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• We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don't think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we're forever condemned to be irrational.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, People, Forever

  Source: www.slate.com

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• When I stand on the edge of a cliff or right at the edge of a building or something, it's one of the few things that gives me kind of a deep, overwhelming, irrational fear where it affects my physiology.

  Chris Hadfield

  Giving, Irrational Fear, Cliffs

  "Chris Hadfield's Lessons from Life in Orbit". "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. November 1, 2013.

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• Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief.

  Epictetus

  Grief, Animal, Men

  Epictetus, George Long (2004). “Enchiridion”, p.53, Courier Corporation

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• The scars left from the child's defeat in the fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis.

  Erich Fromm

  Children, Fighting, Neurosis

  Erich Fromm (1947). “Man for Himself”

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• The irrational haunts the metaphysical.

  Annie Dillard

  Metaphysical

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• Art is magic, not logic. This craze for the logical spirit in irrational shape is part of the present harmful mania for uniformity.

  Edith Sitwell

  Art, Magic, Shapes

  Edith Sitwell (Dame), Elizabeth Salter, Allanah Harper (1976). “Edith Sitwell: fire of the mind : an anthology”, Michael Joseph

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• We must therefore turn to history for enlightenment; here we find that none of the proclaimed anarchist groups correspond to the libertarian position, that even the best of them have unrealistic and socialistic elements in their doctrines. Furthermore, we find that all of the current anarchists are irrational collectivists, and therefore at opposite poles from our position. We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical.

  Murray Rothbard

  Opposites, Enlightenment, Groups

  "Are Libertarians 'Anarchists'?". Faith and Freedom, unpublished, mid-1950s.

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• Only in the irrational and unknown direction can we come to wisdom again

  Jack Parsons

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