Rational Quotes - Page 33

• At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.

  William O. Douglas

  Emotional, Thinking, Decision

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• I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen, and heard in a manner which should make unbelief impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake.

  Augustus De Morgan

  Spiritual, Mistake, Taken

  Augustus De Morgan (1863). “From Matter to Spirit: The Result of Ten Years'experience in Spirit Manifestations. Intended as a Guide to Enquirers”, London, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green

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• The genuine values in America arose from rational thought and breaking with tradition, not from blind allegiance to dirt and cloth.

  Stefan Molyneux

  America, Dirt, Blind

  Twitter post from Dec 16, 2016

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• But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it is madness. Alone I confront them and tell them that nothing could be saner or truer! What do people really know about life? We fall in line, follow the pattern established by our mentors. Everything is based on assumptions; even time, space, motion, matter are nothing but supposition. The world has no new knowledge to impart; it merely accepts what is there.

  Knut Hamsun

  Fall, Men, Space

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• Theology is a serious quest for the true knowledge of God, undertaken in response to His self-revelation, illumined by Christian tradition, manifesting a rational inner coherence, issuing in ethical conduct, resonating with the contemporary world and concerned for the greater glory of God.

  John Stott

  Christian, Self, World

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• Today's environment is beginning to threaten today's organizations, finding them seriously deficient in their nervous system design... The degree of coordination, perception, rational adaptation, etc., which will appear in the next generation of human organizations will drive our present organizational forms, with their clumsy nervous systems, into extinction.

  Douglas Engelbart

  Organization, Design, Perception

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• To go out of your mind once a day is tremendously important, because by going out of your mind you come to your senses. And if you stay in your mind all of the time, you are over rational, in other words you are like a very rigid bridge which because it has no give; no craziness in it, is going to be blown down by the first hurricane.

  Alan Watts

  Bridges, Giving, Mind

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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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• I feel that one must deliberate then act, must scan every life choice with rational thinking but then base the decision on whether one's heart will be in it.

  Jean Shinoda Bolen

  Heart, Thinking, Choices

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• Jurors have found, again and again, and at critical moments, according to what is their sense of the rational and just. If their sense of justice has gone one way, and the case another, they have found "against the evidence," ... the English common law rests upon a bargain between the Law and the people: The jury box is where the people come into the court: The judge watches them and the people watch back. A jury is the place where the bargain is struck. The jury attends in judgment, not only upon the accused, but also upon the justice and the humanity of the Law.

  E. P. Thompson

  Law, People, Justice

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• The idea that there is a rational truth out there that is not embodied in a person's politics is something I can't understand or subscribe to.

  Natalie Jeremijenko

  Ideas, Persons, I Can

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• To a rational being it is the same thing to act according to nature and according to reason.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Reason

  "Meditations". Book by Marcus Aurelius. Book VII, 11,

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• Every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Sake, Constitution, Ought

  Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2015). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius The Golden Sayings Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.41, Lulu.com

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• With its claims to profundity, boldness and originality, thinking still limits itself provisionally to the exclusively rational and scientific. ... As soon as it lays hold of the feelings, it becomes spirit.

  Robert Musil

  Thinking, Feelings, Limits

  Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.43, University of Chicago Press

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• What if I am wrong? Any rational investment plan has to start with that question.

  Peter L. Bernstein

  What If, Investment, Plans

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• The present mode of life on earth is madness, which is nontheless lethal for being legal. Rational existence is possible, but it calls for a world consciousness and a world design. People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.

  Norman Cousins

  Thinking, People, Design

  Saturday Review (editorial), 1971.

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• A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may * * * readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.

  William E. Gladstone

  Excess, Rivals, May

  "Homeric Synchronism: An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer". Book by William Ewart Gladstone, 1876.

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• A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of scepticism may, I admit, readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity. To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.

  William E. Gladstone

  Guarantees, Excess, Rivals

  "Homeric Synchronism : An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer". Book by William Ewart Gladstone, 1876.

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• I have sometimes thought there could be no stronger testimony in favor of Religion or against temporal Enjoyments even the most rational and manly than for men who occupy the most honorable and gainful departments and are rising in reputation and wealth, publicly to declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent Advocates in the cause of Christ, & I wish you may give in your Evidence in this way. Such instances have seldom occurred, therefore they would be more striking and would be instead of a "Cloud of Witnesses.

  James Madison

  Men, Clouds, Giving

  James Madison (1962). “The Papers of James Madison”

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• In some ways we live in a world where things appear to be very logical, very rational, and mechanical aspects of our world are rather scientific and rather straightforward.

  Paul McCartney

  Our World, Way, Logical

  "Sir Paul McCartney". Interview with Chris Dahlen, pitchfork.com. May 21, 2007.

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• How long did it take me to delimit this art? Twenty years! ... It was a laborious process, but a methodical and rational one; gradually the hesitations were ironed out, but not all of a sudden.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Art, Years, Long

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