Rational Quotes - Page 34

• My mother wasn't rational those last years; if she had been, she would have been horrified by her own behavior.

  Lorna Luft

  Mother, Years, Lasts

  Lorna Luft (2015). “Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir”, p.213, Simon and Schuster

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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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• Rational order in the technological world can be as fascinating as the fetishes of a Congo witch-doctor - scientific phenomena become significant images.

  Eduardo Paolozzi

  Technology, Doctors, Order

  Eduardo Paolozzi (1971). “Eduardo Paolozzi”

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• One does not learn anything except by believing something, and -- conversely -- if one doubts everything one learns nothing. On the other hand, believing everything uncritically is the road to disaster. The faculty of doubt is essential. But as I have argued, rational doubt always rests on faith and not vice versa. The relationship between the two cannot be reversed.

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Believe, Hands, Two

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• Were we a rational society, a virtue of which we have rarely been accused, we would husband our oil and gas resources.

  M. King Hubbert

  Husband, Oil, Virtue

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• It is far more rational to suppose that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Order, People, Body

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2015). “The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution”, p.381, Coventry House Publishing

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• The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art. I am often, in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work its way slowly up to what the "superconscious" has already shown me in a story or poem.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.27, Open Road Media

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• A license cannot be revoked because a man is red-headed or because he was divorced, except for a calling, if such there be, for which red-headedness or an unbroken marriage may have some rational bearing. If a State licensing agency lays bare its arbitrary action, or if the State law explicitly allows it to act arbitrarily, that is precisely the kind of State action which the Due Process Clause forbids.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Agency, Law

  "Barsky v. Board of Regents of the University, 347 U.S. 442". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 26, 1954.

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• This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that--a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotized, and do not notice--or if we notice, belittle--equally strong forces on the other side, the forces, in short, of reason, sanity and civilization.

  Doris Lessing

  Strong, Thinking, Civilization

  Doris Lessing (2013). “Prisons We Choose to Live Inside”, p.3, Harper Collins

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• The main purpose of advertising is to undermine markets. If you go to graduate school and you take a course in economics, you learn that markets are systems in which informed consumers make rational choices. That's what's so wonderful about it. But that's the last thing that the state corporate system wants. It is spending huge sums to prevent that.

  Noam Chomsky

  School, Choices, Purpose

  Speech at 25th anniversary of the International Relations Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 26, 2005.

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• Marriage is a public declaration of a man and a woman that they have formed a secret alliance, with the intention to belong to, and share with each other, a mystical estate; mystical exactly in the sense that the real experience cannot be communicated to others, nor explained even to oneself on rational grounds.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Real, Men, Secret

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.944, Library of America

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• Mechanical instruments, potentially a vehicle of rational human purposes, are scarcely a blessing when they enable the gossip of the village idiot and the deeds of the thug to be broadcast to a million people each day.

  Lewis Mumford

  Blessing, Thug, People

  Lewis Mumford, Langdon Winner (2010). “Technics and Civilization”, p.301, University of Chicago Press

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• It is impossible to understand the economic system in which we are living if we try to interpret it as a rational scheme.It has to be understood as an awkward phase in a continuing process of historical development.

  Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Awkward, Historical, Trying

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• There is needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church, but not officials (officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries, because in the rational religion of every individual there does not yet exist a church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva).

  Immanuel Kant

  Teacher, Doubt, Church

  "Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone" by Immanuel Kant, Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, 1793.

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• No crime can ever be defended on rational grounds.

  Livy

  Crime

  "History of Rome". Book by Livy. Book XXVIII, section 28,

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