Irrational Quotes - Page 20

• There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Rights, May, Chance

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• Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those who have set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it.

  Sallust

  Grief, Make Happy, Joy

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• Irrational barriers and ancient prejudices fall quickly when the question of survival itself is at stake.

  John F. Kennedy

  Fall, Survival, Prejudice

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• It is easy enough to say, Be true to your values. But what if your values are irrational? Or what if the virtues you have committed yourself to are so much against human nature that they cannot be practiced consistently? Be careful of what you accept as your code of morality. Think carefully about whether its tenets serve your life and well being. Exercise critical judgment. Realize how much is at stake-your life, your happiness, your self-esteem.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Self Esteem, Exercise, Thinking

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• Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large.

  Plato

  People, Would Be, Body

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• Most of the time it is a good job and a good honour to fight against people's values, because most of the time people's values are irrational and absurd!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Jobs, Fighting, People

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• For some reason I've always had an irrational love for New York. There's no reason that you would necessarily like it on paper. It's very expensive.

  Woody Allen

  New York, Paper, Reason

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• ... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.

  William James

  Philosophy, Thinking, Would Be

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• Building a company is basically taking all the irrational people you know... Putting them in one building and then living with them 12 hrs a day at least.

  Keith Rabois

  People, Building, Company

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• It's a funny thing, by the way, how people who love free markets are also quite sure that they know that investors are being irrational.

  Paul Krugman

  Funny Things, People, Way

  "Why Paul Krugman thinks inflation fears are baloney". Interview with Paul Solman, www.pbs.org. November 3, 2014.

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• A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying.

  Sam Harris

  Running, Country, Believe

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• The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy - and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational

  Steve Allen

  Religious, Philosophy, Commitment

  Steve Allen (1996). “But Seriously--: Steve Allen Speaks His Mind”

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• The term [Americanization] invokes the transformation of the landscape into unnatural mechanical shapes, of night into day, of speed for its own sake, an irrational passion for novelty at the expense of quality, a worship of gimmickry.

  Robert Stone

  Passion, Night, Quality

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• Dilbert: Evolution must be true because it is a logical conclusion of the scientific method.
  Dogbert: But science is based on the irrational belief that because we cannot perceive reality all at once, things called time and cause and effect exist.
  Dilbert: That's what I was taught and that's what I believe.
  Dogbert: Sounds cultish.

  Scott Adams

  Believe, Science, Reality

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• The mystery lies in the irrationality by which you make appearance - if it is not irrational, you make illustration.

  Francis Bacon

  Lying, Illustration, Mystery

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• As for me, you wonder why I am a socialist. I'll tell you. It is because socialism is inevitable; because the present rotten and irrational system cannot endure; because the day is past for your man on horseback. The slaves won't stand for it. They are too many, and willy-nilly they'll drag down the would-be equestrian before he gets astride. You can't get away from them, and you'll have to swallow the whole slave-morality. It's not a nice mess, I'll allow. But it's been a-brewing and swallow it you must.

  Jack London

  Nice, Past, Men

  Jack London (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)”, p.1507, Delphi Classics

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• As I'm writing, I start to see connections, and themes I didn't see, and that sparks other things. So then I go back and rewrite things or alter them. It's a combination of intuition and a lot of finessing. It becomes a combination of the rational and the irrational.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Writing, Intuition, Connections

  "'Synecdoche, New York' Director Charlie Kaufman'". Interview with Howard Feinstein, www.indiewire.com. October 24, 2008.

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• In the '90s it was irrational exuberance. Now it may be irrational doom and gloom.

  Robert Reich

  Doom And Gloom, May, Exuberance

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• Hysteria is a chaotic and irrational emotional state caused by seeing how the world really operates.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Emotional, Hysteria, World

  Robert Anton Wilson (1982). “The Earth Will Shake: A Novel”, J P Tarcher

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• A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they've got terrible temperaments. And that is why we say that having a certain kind of temperament is more important than brains. You need to keep raw irrational emotion under control. You need patience and discipline and an ability to take losses and adversity without going crazy. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success

  Charlie Munger

  Crazy, Adversity, Loss

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• The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of people, who are innately obedient to authority. This obedience-truth will then become a consensus-truth accepted by many individuals unable to stand alone against the majority. In this way, the truth promulgated by the propaganda system - however irrational - stands a good chance of becoming the consensus, and may come to seem self-evident common sense.

  David Edward

  Self, Common Sense, People

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• If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesnt get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational.

  Lars Peter Hansen

  Mean, Agents, Concrete

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• Science fiction has always had a dark side. There has been a touch of the irrational and absurd in the genre from the very beginning.

  Douglas Lain

  Dark, Sides, Fiction

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• Humans were eventually irrational creatures gifted with the power of rationality.

  L.E. Modesitt Jr.

  Gifted, Rationality, Humans

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• Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved-that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Silly, Men, Views

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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