Rational Quotes - Page 28

• Indeed, I am sometimes inclined to doubt whether some men consider youth as rational and intelligent beings, with minds capable of expansion, and talents formed for usefulness.

  Joseph Lancaster

  Intelligent, Men, Doubt

  Joseph Lancaster (1803). “Improvements in education, as it respects the industrious classes of the community”, p.14

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• I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man. Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force? Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying to our nature than a waste of the blood of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Men, Blood

  Thomas Jefferson, Barbara B. Oberg, Lyman Henry Butterfield, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti (2003). “The papers of Thomas Jefferson: 1 January 1798 to 31 January 1799”, Princeton Univ Pr

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• In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wisdom, Men, Rights

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1832). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.587

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• After a period in which technocrats attempted to become stars and stars to become politicians, the political void has been occupied by the force of mediocrity, which can easily master enough of the star techniques to produce inoffensive personalities and enough of the rational vocabulary to create the sounds of competence.

  John Ralston Saul

  Stars, Vocabulary, Personality

  John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.532, Simon and Schuster

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• RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Reflection, Experience, Observation

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.175, 谷月社

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• If we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.

  Aristotle

  Men, Soul, Good Man

  "Nicomachean Ethics". Book by Aristotle. Book I, 1098a,

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• I would never sit and write a song in front of anyone, because you're so vulnerable. I don't know at what point in the process that it becomes acceptable to pass them on. When a song wants to be written, it will be written. When it does come, I will very rarely go back and edit lyrics. I'm quite a rational human being, and the only part of my life that I can't rationalise, or can't make sense of, is how a song gets written or why.

  Laura Marling

  Song, Writing, Doe

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• Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

  Salman Rushdie

  Book, Writing, Creation

  Salman Rushdie (1990). “In good faith”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Yes, what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a machine-made article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it again.

  Hermann Hesse

  Men, Order, Mad

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• Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Unique, Bipolar

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.11, Pan Macmillan

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• The pursuit of pleasure must be the goal of every rational person.

  Voltaire

  Goal, Pleasure, Pursuit

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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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• Yoga is a science, and not a vague dreamy drifting or imagining. It is an applied science, a systematized collection of laws applied to bring about a definite end. It takes up the laws of psychology, applicable to the unfolding of the whole consciousness of man on every plane, in every world, and applies those rationally in a particular case. This rational application of the laws of unfolding consciousness acts exactly on the same principles that you see applied around you every day in other departments of science.

  Annie Besant

  Success, Yoga, Men

  Annie Besant (2017). “The Nature and Practice of Yoga”, BookRix

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• Regardless of the method, the act of worship must be in spirit and truth-from our rational consciousness and consistent with the rest of our lives (see John 4:24). We don't have to be great singers or musicians to worship God. But we do need to be in a personal relationship with Him and live with the truth of His greatness reflecting through all we are becoming and all we do.

  Darlene Zschech

  Greatness, Musician, Needs

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• What else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I would do the nightingale's part; if I were a swan, I would do as a swan. But now I am a rational creature, and I ought to praise God. This is my work. I do it, nor will I desert my post, so long as I am allowed to keep it. And I ask you to join me in this same song.

  Epictetus

  Song, Men, Swans

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• The void in our society has been produced by the absence of values... we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.

  John Ralston Saul

  Vision, Our Society, Way

  John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.584, Simon and Schuster

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• Reality and truth are not products of rational or linear thinking. They are derived from absolute wisdom as it manifests itself spontaneously, coming from the light of the Spirit.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

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• For you deal here above all with human life, and human life is sacred; no one may dare make an attempt upon it. Respect for life, even with regard to the great problem of the birth rate, must find here in your Assembly its highest affirmation and its most rational defense. Your task is to ensure that there is enough bread on the tables of mankind, and not to encourage an artificial control of births, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.

  Pope Paul VI

  Numbers, Order, Birth Rate

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• The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, War, Teaching

  "Why I Am Not a Christian".

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• The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Airplane, Science, Discovery

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• When I was a very young author, I knew I needed to build myself a tower outside of Europe. Like when you're a hunter, and build towers to watch the animals move. I knew I would never understand the world without that perspective. I came to Africa for that rational reason, although I love Mozambique now.

  Henning Mankell

  Moving, Animal, Europe

  "All along the watchtower" by Nick Hasted, www.theguardian.com. January 11, 2002.

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• ...(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Self, Spirituality, Transcendence

  Reinhold Niebuhr (1996). “The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation : Human Nature”, p.25, Westminster John Knox Press

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• The rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

  Garrett Hardin

  Believe, Men, Animal

  "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science, 13 Dec. 1968

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• Western civilisation needs a complete overhaul or it will fall apart one day or another. It has realised the most complete perversion of any rational order of things. Reign of matter, of gold, of machine, of number, it no longer possesses breath, or liberty, or light.

  Julius Evola

  Fall, Light, Order

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• The Holy Grail of universal coverage in the United States may remain out of reach unless, through rational collective action overriding some individual self-interest, we can reduce per capita costs.

  Donald Berwick

  Self, Holy Grail, United States

  "The Triple Aim: Care, Health, And Cost" by Donald Berwick, Thomas W. Nolan and John Whittington in "Health Affairs", Volume 27, No. 3 (pp. 759-769), May/June 2008.

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