Irrational Quotes - Page 4

• Our lives are more like fragmentary dreams than the enactments of conscious selves. We control very little of what we most care about; many of our most fateful decisions are made unbeknownst to ourselves. Yet we insist that mankind can achieve what we cannot: conscious mastery of its existence. This is the creed of those who have given up an irrational belief in God for an irrational faith in mankind.

  John Gray

  Dream, Self, Decision

  "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (The Deception: At the Masked Ball)". Book by John Gray (p. 38), August 29, 2002.

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• Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational ... architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.

  Roland Barthes

  Dream, Men, Expression

  Roland Barthes (1997). “The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies”, p.6, Univ of California Press

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• You tell them what a happy ending consists of, which is always individual success. You tell them that nothing irrational exists in this world, which is a lie. You tell them that conflict only exists only to be neatly resolved, and that everyone who is poor wants to be rich, and everyone who is ill wants to get better, and everyone who gets involved in crime comes to a bad end, and that love should be pure. You tell them that despite all this they are special, that the world revolves around them.

  Scarlett Thomas

  Lying, Special, Get Better

  Scarlett Thomas (2010). “Our Tragic Universe”, p.88, Canongate Books

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• To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”)

  Thomas Ligotti

  Memories, Dark, Hysteria

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• Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Patriotism, Fever, Stones

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2230, Delphi Classics

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• Don't be upset. Don't listen to me. I only meant that I am jealous of a dark, unconscious element, something irrational, unfathomable. I am jealous of your toilet articles, of the drops of sweat on your skin, of the germs in the air you breathe which could get into your blood and poison you. And I am jealous of Komarovsky, as if he were an infectious disease. Someday he will take you away, just as certainly as death will someday separate us. I know this must seem obscure and confused, but I can't say it more clearly. I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.

  Boris Pasternak

  Confused, Love You, Jealous

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• It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence.

  Carl Jung

  Thinking, Differences, People

  Carl Gustav Jung, Gerhard Adler (1976). “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung”, Bollingen

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• To feel our character, our personality, and our personal, hard-won history fade from being is to be exposed to whatever lies beneath these comforting, operational conveniences. What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind's fundamental condition – irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad.

  Peter Straub

  Lying, Character, Self

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• Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Love Is, New Moon, Made

  Stephenie Meyer (2009). “New Moon”, p.193, Hachette UK

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• We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Way, Reason

  "Island".

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• The disappearance of theology from the life of the Church, and the orchestration of that disappearance by some of its leaders, is hard to miss today, but oddly enough, not easy to prove. It is hard to miss in the evangelical world--in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift form God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational.

  David F. Wells

  Thinking, Erosion, Self

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• The soul may not be destroyed. The soul goes on forever. Like the number pi, it is without cessation or conclusion. Like pi it is a constant. Pi is an irrational number, incapable of being made into a fraction, impossible to divide from itself. So, too, the soul is an irrational, indivisible equation that perfectly expresses one thing: you.

  Joe Hill

  Irrational Numbers, Forever, Soul

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• We'll tell our secrets to the dark"-Adam "Okay"-Mia "So let's hear another of your irrational fears"-Adam "I'm scared of losing you"-Mia "I said 'irrational' fears. Because that's not gonna happen"-Adam "It still scares me"- Mia

  Gayle Forman

  Dark, Secret, Scare

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• Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds

  Thomas Hardy

  Perfect, Deeds, Assumption

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “Far from the Madding Crowd: Works of Hardy”, p.83, 谷月社

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• Beware: Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.

  Octavia Butler

  Ignorance, Blind, Quails

  Octavia E. Butler (2012). “Parable of the Talents”, p.244, Open Road Media

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• I steal into their dreams," he said. "I steal into their most shameful thoughts, I'm in every shiver, every spasm of their souls, I steal into their hearts, I scrutinize their most fundamental beliefs, I scan their irrational impulses, their unspeakable emotions, I sleep in their lungs during the summer and their muscles during the winter, and all of this I do without the least effort, without intending to, without asking or seeking it out, without constraints, driven only by love and devotion.

  Roberto Bolano

  Summer, Dream, Sleep

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• So let's hear another one of your irrational fears. Mia grasped me by the arms and pulled herself in to my chest, like she was burrowing her body into mine. "I'm scared of losing you," she said in the faintest of voices." I pushed her away so I could see her face and kissed the top of her forehead. "I said 'irrational' fears. Because that's not gonna happen.

  Gayle Forman

  Voice, Mia, Irrational Fear

  Gayle Forman (2011). “Where She Went”, p.87, Penguin

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• He was making her feel small and absurdly petulant and, worse yet, she suspected he was right. She always suspected he was right. For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Trying, Needs, Moments

  FaceBook post by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Aug 04, 2011

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• I didn't ask you to catch me!" "You're so delightful when you're irrational. Of course I'm going to catch you." He slid a hand behind her nape and kissed her again. "It's what I do.

  Shana Abe

  Hands, Catch Me, Behinds

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• Faeries are not fantasy, but a connection to reality. Faeries are irrational, poetic, absurd, and very, very wise. Faeries say there is nonsense in dogma, and sense in nonsense. Faeries express themselves with high seriousness and low humour. Faeries are resistant to all definitions.

  Brian Froud

  Wise, Reality, Connections

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• "This isn't over," I said. "After everything we've been through, you don't get the right to brush me off. I'm not letting you off that easily." I wasn't sure if it was a threat, my last stab at defiance, or irrational words spoken straight from my splintered heart. "I want to protect you," Patch said quietly. He stood so close. All strength and heat and silent power. I couldn't escape him, now or ever. He'd always be there, consuming my every thought, my heart locked in his hands. I was drawn to him by forces I couldn't control, let alone escape. "But you didn't".

  Becca Fitzpatrick

  Heart, Hands, Want

  "Silence". Book by Becca Fitzpatrick, www.mtv.com. October 4, 2011.

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• There was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.

  John Green

  Real, Cancer, Math

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.213, Penguin

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• If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Lying, Character, Answers

  "On the Heights of Despair". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1934.

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• ... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Ignorance, Knowing, Mind Blowing

  Neil Degrasse Tyson (2010). “The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist”, p.38, Prometheus Books

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• What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?

  Rowan Atkinson

  Atheist, Fear, Teaching

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