Rational Quotes - Page 2

• The intuitive mind is a sacred gift.

  Albert Einstein

  Psychics, Gifts Of The Spirit, Faithful Servants

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• When the waters of a lake are absolutely still, the lake reflects the trees, the sky, and everything around it perfectly. At the slightest breeze, with the smallest ripple in the waters, the lake reflects nothing but itself. To see another with clarity and objectivity, one first must master stillness. The slightest breeze of judgment or interpretation from the rational mind will create a ripple that shatters Awareness and returns us to ordinary perception.

  Alberto Villoldo

  Lakes, Objectivity, Sky

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• Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.

  Michael Shermer

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

  "What Is Skepticism, Anyway?" by Michael Shermer, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 31, 2013.

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• I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Wise, Spiritual

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• The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Ideas, Mind

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• He knew when to compromise. Yet he never compromised his principles. He was a militant. Yet a militant who knew how to plan, assess concrete situations and emerge with rational solutions to problems.

  Nelson Mandela

  Inspiring, Principles, Compromise

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• I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, God, Spiritual

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.330, Princeton University Press

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• If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

  Gloria Steinem

  Men, Emotional, Long

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.555, Open Road Media

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• The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.

  Albert Einstein

  Life, Motivational, God

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.49, Broadway Books

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• No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

  Karl Popper

  Attitude, Men, Doe

  Karl Popper (2012). “The Open Society and its Enemies”, p.503, Routledge

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• Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.

  R. D. Laing

  Depression, Crazy, Insane World

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• The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

  Richard Dawkins

  Simple, Blind Belief, Curiosity

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.219, Oxford University Press

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• The ultimate solutions to problems are rational; the process of finding them is not.

  J. P. Guilford

  Challenges, Problem, Brainstorming

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• I think 'vegan' is a beautiful word. It is more than just a description for our diet. I see it as a visible template for an ethical, healthy, responsible, and rational life. Because it describes our character, it says we do not take the life of another living being to satisfy our wants.

  Philip Wollen

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

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• A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Powerful, Thoughtful, Love Is

  Saint Thomas Aquinas (1951). “Philosophical Texts”, London : Oxford University Press

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• What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Philosophy, Philosophical

  Philosophy of Right (1821)

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• History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Strong, Atheist, People

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.224, Penguin

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• With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.

  Jane Austen

  Work, Women, Please

  'Emma' (1816) ch. 13 (Mr John Knightley, of Mr Elton)

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• The being we call god is merely a pawn working for a powerful and rational force in some far-off galaxy. This force is trying to weed out people who are irrational by seeing who would be stupid enough to believe in his god illusion so easily. Those that believe in this illusion, he will send to eternal damnation and he will deliver the rational beings, those who stoically refused to believe in a god, to heaven.

  Nick Yee

  God, Weed, Atheist

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• The most common cause of low prices is pessimism - some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It's optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.

  Warren Buffett

  Optimism, Enemy, Saving

  Chairman's Letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., www.berkshirehathaway.com. 1990.

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• A god or revelation capable of proof or rational verification by an autonomous man would be worthless.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  Men, Would Be, Revelations

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• All I desire for my own burial, is not to be buried alive; but how or where, I think, must be entirely indifferent to every rational creature.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Death, Thinking, Desire

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.365, Oxford University Press

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• As an atheist evolving to agnosticism, and seeking answers to whether or not belief in God is potentially rational, my life was turned upside down 35 years ago by reading C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.

  Francis Collins

  Life, God, Atheist

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• To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things.

  Saint Augustine

  Wisdom, Knowledge, Intellectual

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• I'm optimistic about Turkey's prospects for reaching the E.U.'s standards of development, governance, and democracy, whether inside or outside the E.U. Provided you have a prosperous, rational society in Turkey that can interact with Europe and the West, I don't really care what kind of institutional arrangement you have. The point to make about Turkey and Europe is that it's a very long, drawn-out process. What's important is that the process not be stopped, that Turkey and Europe evolve in the right direction, on a path of convergence. Convergence is the name of the game.

  Andrew Mango

  Optimistic, Long, Democracy

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