Rational Quotes - Page 38

• What matters is that they are curious about life, energy, truth, and themselves and that they haven't sold out to the establishment powers that tell us what to think, what to wear, how to behave, what to believe in and what goes beyond the line of rational and irrational thought.

  Frederick Lenz

  Believe, Buddhism, Thinking

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• Why did the Germans and Japanese keep fighting after 1943 when every rational hope of victory had disappeared?

  Niall Ferguson

  Fighting, History, Victory

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• Louis B. Mayer is one of those with a claim to posessing the equation... he began to buy up nickelodeon arcades in the years before the First World War in and around Boston. He had noticed that people liked going into the dark to see the light... the appeal of the movies is beyond the sensible, rational or the hard-working. Going into the dark, afte centuries of progress in which mankind has staggered toward artificial light, smacks of delicious perversity.

  Edward Jay Epstein

  War, Hard Work, Dark

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• The claim is also sometimes made that science is as arbitrary or irrational as all other claims to knowledge, or that reason itself is an illusion. As Ethan Allen said Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are labouring to dethrone. If they argue without reason, which they must do, in order to be consistent with themselves, they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Order, Principles

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• It has been the fashion to speak of the conflict between human rights and property rights, and from this it has come to be widely believed that the use of private property is tainted with evil and should not be espoused by rational and civilized men... the only dependable foundation of personal liberty is the personal economic security of private property. The Good Society.

  Walter Lippmann

  Wisdom, Fashion, Men

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• 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 Federal Reserve is the overlord of the money supply. If these two are not steering in the same direction, they can either neutralize each other or have the economy lurching in all directions. This is not a rational system for setting economic policy. It has given us trouble in the past, as the text will establish, and will inevitably in the future.

  Wright Patman

  Past, Two, Politics

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• We believe this approach (progress sharing) is a rational approach because you cooperate in creating the abundance that makes the progress possible, and then you share that progress after the fact, and not before the fact. Profit sharing would resolve the conflict between management apprehensions and worker expectations on the basis of solid economic facts as they materialize rather than on the basis of speculation as to what the future might hold.

  Walter Reuther

  Believe, Creating, Expectations

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• A wise man has told us that "men are once for all so made that they prefer a rational world to believe in and live in."

  Jane Addams

  Wise, Believe, Men

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• The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith - that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Lying, Mind, Atheism

  "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• A mode of knowledge rooted in silence and intuitive insight which gives meaning to life but which cannot be explained in rational terms.

  Karen Armstrong

  Giving, Silence, Atheism

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• I really don't put it down. I never have. It's just that I analyze it and look at it from a very rational point of view. I don't see it as coming from God and say that at a certain point the Holy Spirit zaps you with a super whammy on the head and you've "gone for tongues" and there is it. Tongues is a process that people build up to. Then, as you start to do something, just as when you practice the scales on the piano, you get better at it.

  Marjoe Gortner

  Views, Practice, Piano

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• I dont agree with those who think that the conflict is simply between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam... To me, the key conflict is between irrational blind faith and rational, logical minds.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Thinking, Keys, Two

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• My wife has told me since that I was hungover every mornng until about two in the afternoon, and from five until midnight I was drunk out of my mind. So she says there was this period of about three hours when she could talk to me like a rational human being.

  Stephen King

  Two, Drunk, Wife

  "Part two of the full Stephen King interview". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. September 14, 2000.

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• You're damn right we need a rational code of morality and ethics. But not much progress can be made in that direction while we've still got a majority ranting about gods, devils, souls, and absolute morality, and using an ancient book written by ignorant nomads as a guide.

  Doug Graham

  Book, Soul, Ignorant

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• Religion is something that gets hammered in early, and never really goes away. And has powers to move which go beyond anything rational.

  Glen Cook

  Moving, Hammered

  Glen Cook (2007). “Chronicles of the Black Company”, p.391, Macmillan

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• A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Thinking, Feelings

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.47, Penguin

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• You can't behave in a calm, rational manner. You've got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.

  Jack Welch

  Calm, Fringe, Behave

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• As the economy unravels, as hundreds of millions of Americans confront the fact that things will not get better, life for those targeted by this culture of hate will become increasingly difficult. Rational debate will prove useless.

  Chris Hedges

  Hate, Get Better, Culture

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• Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Philosophy, Expression, Genius

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• Charity is that rational and constant affection which makes us sacrifice ourselves to the human race, as if we were united with it, so as to form one individual, partaking equally in its adversity and prosperity.

  Confucius

  Adversity, Sacrifice, Race

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 46, 1895.

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• Being rational is a moral Imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be.

  Charlie Munger

  Needs, Moral, Should

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• A rational nature admits of nothing but what is serviceable to the rest of mankind.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Human Nature, Mankind

  Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome), André Dacier, Thomas Gataker (1701). “The Emperor-Marcus Antonius: his conversation with himself. together with the preliminary discourse of the learned Gataker”, p.180

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• To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Envy, Design, May

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.211

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• Providence has fixed the limits of human enjoyment by immovable boundaries, and has set different gratifications at such a distance from each other, that no art or power can bring them together. This great law it is the business of every rational being to understand, that life may not pass away in an attempt to make contradictions consistent, to combine opposite qualities, and to unite things which the nature of their being must always keep asunder.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Distance, Law

  Samuel Johnson, William Page (1860). “Life and Writings”, p.148

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