Rational Quotes - Page 27

• Humans alone are created as rational beings in the image of God, capable of a relationship with God and given by him the capacity to understand the universe in which they live.

  John Lennox

  Capacity, Given, Relationship With God

  John Lennox (2011). “Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target”, p.28, Lion Books

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today, architecture is invention. It isn't enough to just be rational - It must also be beautiful.

  Oscar Niemeyer

  Beautiful, Today, Architecture

  48 Copy quote

• A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.

  Boethius

  Individuality, Substance, Persons

  25 Copy quote

• For centuries, we in the West have thought of ourselves as rational animals whose mental capacities transcend our bodily nature. In this traditional view our minds are abstract, logical, unemotionally rational, consciously accessible, and, above all, able to directly fit and represent the world. Language has a special place in thie view of what a human is - it is a privileged, logical symbol system internal to our minds that transparently expresses abstract concepts that are defined in terms of the external world itself.

  George Lakoff

  Animal, Views, Mind

  13 Copy quote

• Near the end of the 1700s, philosophers began to declare that humans were rational individuals. People were flattered by being recognized as individuals, and by being called rational, and the idea soon wormed its way into the belief systems of nearly everyone in the upper class. Despite resistance from Church and State, the idea of rational individuality replaced the assumption that truth comes only from god and king.

  Alex Pentland

  Kings, Class, Ideas

  5 Copy quote

• Don't neglect your critical faculties. Remember that God is a rational God, who has made us in His own image. God invites and expects us to explore His double revelation, in nature and Scripture, with the minds He has given us, and to go on in the development of a Christian mind to apply His marvellous revealed truth to every aspect of the modern and post-modern world.

  John Stott

  Christian, Mind, Development

  8 Copy quote

• I am not well qualified to criticize the theory of rational expectations and the efficient market hypothesis because as a market participant I considered them so unrealistic that I never bothered to study them.

  George Soros

  Expectations, Study, Theory

  George Soros' Remarks at the Festival of Economics, www.georgesoros.com. June 2, 2012.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.

  Epictetus

  Unendurable, Irrational

  Epictetus (1926). “Discourses”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern science and technology can relieve men of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labor. They may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.

  Noam Chomsky

  Technology, Men, Order

  Noam Chomsky (2003). “For Reasons Of State”, p.404, Penguin Books India

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Rights

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.314, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Evil

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.21, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

  Ayn Rand

  Moral, Reason, Accepting

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.961, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Men, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• No advocate of reason can claim the right to force his ideas on others. No advocate of the free mind can claim the right to force the minds of others. No rational society, no co-operation, no agreement, no understanding, no discussion are possible among men who propose to substitute guns for rational persuasion.

  Ayn Rand

  Gun, Men, Ideas

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.48, Penguin

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• It has a sound and rational circulating medium, a real and definite representative of wealth.

  Josiah Warren

  Real, Sound, Corny

  8 Copy quote

• Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.

  Ayn Rand

  Independent, Men, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.231, Penguin

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Creativity, People, Way

  "Neil deGrasse Tyson on His Books". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument. And the emotional faculties are more highly developed in most men than the rational, paradoxically or especially even in those who regard themselves as intellectuals.

  Milton Friedman

  Simple, Men, Emotional

  10 Copy quote

• The rational transparency and beauty of the universe are surely too remarkable to be treated as just happy accidents.

  John Polkinghorne

  Happy Accidents, Transparency, Remarkable

  John Polkinghorne, Nicholas Beale (2009). “Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief”, p.12, Westminster John Knox Press

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• Refuse any image that could have a rational meaning or any memory or culture

  Luis Bunuel

  Memories, Culture, Refuse

  25 Copy quote

• Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner

  H. L. Mencken

  Law, Intimidation, Made

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.260, Vintage

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Christian faith does not call for us to put our minds on the shelf, to fly in the face of common sense and history, or to make a leap of faith into the dark. The rational person, fully apprised of the evidence, can confidently believe.

  William Lane Craig

  Christian, Believe, Dark

  78 Copy quote

• Whichever theory we adopt to give a rational explanation of human existence, that theory must take into account and explain the mental nature we see at work in all modern communities.

  Arthur Keith

  Giving, Community, Mental Health

  Sir Arthur Keith (1947). “Evolution and Ethics”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am continually calming the restless scanning of my rational mind in order to perceive the finer energies that enable me to unitively merge with everything around me.

  Ken Keyes Jr.

  Order, Mind, Energy

  4 Copy quote

• I think the more rational explanation is that the excision of a five-to-six-foot leech from the surface of a human body means that that body is going to have more of its own blood in its own veins. Unless the leech finds another body, it is going to go hungry.

  Dave Sim

  Mean, Thinking, Feet

  21 Copy quote