Rational Quotes - Page 19

• 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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• [I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Honesty, Government, House

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.

  Bertrand Russell

  Clever, Animal, Men

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• After I went to bed I had a curious fancy as to dreams. In sleep the doors of the mind are shut, and thoughts come jumping in at the windows. They tumble headlong, and therefore are so disorderly and strange. Sometimes they are stout and light on their feet, and then they are rational dreams.

  James Boswell

  Dream, Sleep, Thoughtful

  James Boswell (2001). “Boswell's Edinburgh Journals 1767-1786”, Mercat Press Books

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• The man of regular life and rational mind never despairs.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Men, Worry, Mind

  Charlotte Bronte (2009). “The Professor: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition”, p.88, ReadHowYouWant.com

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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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• Football is an absolutely idiotic pastime by any rational standards. You're running into other people as hard as you can, you get frequent muscle strains and ligament tears, and the protective padding really doesn't do all that much to absorb the blunt trauma.

  Chris Kluwe

  Football, Running, Nfl

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• So many of the properties of matter, especially when in the gaseous form, can be deduced from the hypothesis that their minute parts are in rapid motion, the velocity increasing with the temperature, that the precise nature of this motion becomes a subject of rational curiosity. Daniel Bernoulli, Herapath, Joule, Kronig, Clausius, &c., have shewn that the relations between pressure, temperature and density in a perfect gas can be explained by supposing the particles move with uniform velocity in straight lines, striking against the sides of the containing vessel and thus producing pressure.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Moving, Perfect, Curiosity

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• The great scientific achievements are research programmes which can be evaluated in terms of progressive and degenerative problemshifts; and scientific revolutions consist of one research programme superceding (overtaking in progress) another. This methodology offers a new rational reconstruction of science.

  Imre Lakatos

  Science, Achievement, Progress

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• I think the idea that the hedge fund manager gets lower taxes than the taxi driver or the physics professor is insane. The legislators who leave that policy in place are derelict in their duties to be rational and fair. There are plenty of them in both political parties. It's totally outrageous.

  Charlie Munger

  Party, Thinking, Ideas

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• I am nothing if not rational about what is worthy of my anxiety and what is not, and I refuse to live my life as if a giant bus is just around the corner, waiting to crush me the minute I step off the curb.

  Deborah Copaken

  Crush, Waiting, Anxiety

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• Life, from beginning to end, is fear. Yes, it is pain, yes, it is desire, but more than anything it is fear; a certain amount rational, an enormous amount irrational. All political cruelties stem from that overwhelming fear. To push back the threatening forces, to offer primitive sacrifices, to give up some in the hope that others will be savedthat is the power struggle. That is the outsidedness of the poor, the feeble, the infantile. That is the outsidedness of Jews. That is the outsidedness of blacks. That is the outsidedness of women.

  Vivian Gornick

  Giving Up, Pain, Fear

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• Johnson is wise, Boswell foolish; Johnson warns and abstains, Boswell plunges; Johnson is rather a great man writing than a greatwriter, Boswell is a great writer and an ordinary man; and they are two of a kind, abysmal melancholics and compulsive socializers, afraid of solitude and afraid of death and dissolution, victims of themselves, meant for each other, needing each other, needing evidence and arguments (Boswell is a lawyer, Johnson magisterially dictates to him some of his briefs), making beautiful models of rational discourse out of the useful substance of all they know.

  Marvin Mudrick

  Friendship, Beautiful, Wise

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• The visible universe is subject to quantification, and is so by necessity. … Between you and me only reason will be the judge … since you proceed according to the rational method, so shall I. … I will also give reason and take it. … This generation has an innate vice. It can’t accept anything that has been discovered by a contemporary!

  Adelard of Bath

  Giving, Judging, Generations

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• As an element in human progress, the right of private property, in importance, has taken first and almost only place in the current systems of law and of political economy. While admitting its great importance, we cannot conceal the fact that the writers on those subjects have wholly failed to distinguish between its use and its abuse, or to recognize its rational and equitable limits.

  Joshua K. Ingalls

  Taken, Law, Political

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• We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will, therefore, always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in pursuit of it. No, we are complicated machines; and though we have one main spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometime stop that motion.

  Doug Stanhope

  Spring, Passion, Men

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• I advance no exaggerated or fanciful claim for Vegetarianism. It is not, as some have asserted, a "panacea" for human ills; it is something much more rational - an essential part of the modern humanitarian movement, which can make no true progress without it. Vegetarianism is the diet of the future, as flesh-food is the diet of the past.

  Henry Stephens Salt

  Past, Vegetarianism, Progress

  "The Humanities of Diet". Book by Henry Stephens Salt, 1897.

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• What do you think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around and see how many are in absolute need of that which you do not need? Can you not take the hint?

  J. G. Holland

  Thinking, Needs, Looks

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 27, 1895.

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• Better a superstitious believer than a rational unbeliever.

  Nachman of Breslov

  Believer, Superstitious, Unbelievers

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• A rational prediction has an explanation based on theory.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Management, Predictions, Theory

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• Well, one time some attractive woman sat next to Charlie and asked him what he owed his success to, and, unfortunately, she insisted on a one word answer. He had a speech prepared that would have gone on for several hours. But when forced to boil it down to one word, he said that was "rational". You know, he comes equipped for rationality, and he applies it in business. He doesn't always apply it elsewhere, but he applies it in business and that has made him a huge business success.

  Warren Buffett

  Business Success, Next, Gone

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• Lightning is like an elementary spirit, eccentric or rational, clever or silly, passing from one extreme to the other.

  Camille Flammarion

  Clever, Silly, Lightning

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• Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of.

  Richard Whately

  Men, Divine Wisdom, Interesting

  Richard Whately (1855). “Introductory lectures on political-economy, delivered at Oxford, in Easter term MDCCCXXXI. With remarks on tithes and on poor-laws and on penal colonies”, p.64

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• Rational discourse is only one way of presenting and examining an issue and by no means the best. Our new intellectuals are not aware of its limitations and of the nature of the things outside.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Mean, Issues, Way

  "Science in a Free Society". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1978.

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• There is no "scientific worldview" just as there is no uniform enterprise "science" - except in the minds of metaphysicians, school masters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche... There is no objective principle that could direct us away from the supermarket "religion" or the supermarket "art" toward the more modern, and much more expensive supermarket "science." Besides, the search for such guidance would be in conflict with the idea of individual responsibility which allegedly is an important ingredient of a "rational" or scientific age.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Art, Responsibility, School

  "Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Richness". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1999.

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