Rational Quotes - Page 6

• Devotion has its own strange ways. It is not something rational, logical, something that can be explained to you. But it is something, if you go on growing from a student into a disciple, from a disciple into a devotee, and you come so close to the master that there is no distinction at all.

  Rajneesh

  Goes On, Growing, Way

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• Some problems are just too complicated for rational, logical solutions. They admit of insights, not answers.

  Jerome Wiesner

  Answers, Complicated, Problem

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• They are nonhuman persons. They are not food. If animals matter morally at all, there is one and only one rational response: go vegan. Everything else is just participation in animal exploitation.

  Gary L. Francione

  Animal, Matter, Vegan

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• The re-interpretation and eventually (sic) eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training, the substitution of intelligent and rational thinking for faith... are the belated objectives of practically all effective psychotherapy. The fact is, that most psychiatrists and psychologists and other respectable people have escaped from these moral chains and are able to observe and think freely.

  Brock Chisholm

  Family, Children, Intelligent

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• The will and self are ultimately dynamic, they are their actions. This energy can be trained and directed, tuned like an orchestra. It is not a matter of a "rational interior" that poses a problem for a decorator, rather a feng-shui intelligence is called for that orients the "house" to the flow of life that takes place in it (I rather suspect this is turned on its head in most cases of feng-shui, i.e. Americans capitulate once again to "experts").

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Self, House

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• For the emergent process, as noted by the geneticist Theodore Dobzhansky, is neither random nor determined but creative. Just as in human order, creativity is neither a rational deductive process nor the irrational wandering of the undisciplined mind but the emergence of beauty as mysterious as the blossoming of a field of daisies out of the dark Earth.

  Thomas Berry

  Beauty, Creativity, Dark

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.31, Crown

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• If we had a better understanding of the ways we think about enemies, we might be able to think of more rational ways of settling conflict.

  Sam Keen

  Hero, Thinking, Understanding

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• This is why rational people - anti-religionists - must end their timidity and come out of their closet and assert themselves.

  Bill Maher

  People, Religion, Atheism

  "Religulous". www.imdb.com. 2008.

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• ...any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious.

  Julian Huxley

  Religious, Real, Inspiration

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• Man has but little heeded the advice of the wise men. He has been - fatefully, if not willingly - less virtuous, less constant, less rational, less peaceful than he knows how to be, than he is fully capable of being. He has been led astray from the ways of peace and brotherhood by his addiction to concepts and attitudes of narrow nationalism, racial and religious bigotry, greed and lust for power.

  Ralph Bunche

  Wise, Wisdom, Religious

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• Opinions don't affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you're rational

  Ricky Gervais

  Atheism, Facts, Opinion

  Twitter post from Oct 4, 2012

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• This formidable censor of the public functionaries [the press], by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Mind, Public Opinion

  Thomas Jefferson, H. A. Washington (2011). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private”, p.324, Cambridge University Press

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• Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Drinking, Laughing, Would Be

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

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• It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.

  Thomas Huxley

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  "Emancipation – Black and White". Essay by Thomas Henry Huxley, mathcs.clarku.edu. 1865.

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• All changes, even positive ones, are scary. Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of kaizen disarm the brain's fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.

  Robert D. Maurer

  Change, Mean, Play

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• I am arguing that faith as such, faith as an alleged method of acquiring knowledge, is totally invalid and as a consequence, all propositions of faith, because they lack rational demonstration, must conflict with reason.

  George H. Smith

  Religion, Atheism, Acquiring Knowledge

  George H. Smith (2010). “Atheism: The Case Against God”, p.120, Prometheus Books

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• A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.

  Walter Lippmann

  Real, Men, Balance

  Walter Lippmann (1955). “Essays in the Public Philosophy”, p.43, Transaction Publishers

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• Upon the whole, Chymistry is as yet but an opening science, closely connected with the usefull and ornamental arts, and worthy the attention of the liberal mind. And it must always become more and more so: for though it is only of late, that it has been looked upon in that light, the great progress already made in Chymical knowledge, gives us a pleasant prospect of rich additions to it. The Science is now studied on solid and rational grounds. While our knowledge is imperfect, it is apt to run into error: but Experiment is the thread that will lead us out of the labyrinth.

  Joseph Black

  Running, Art, Science

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• I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaître first proposed this [Big Bang] theory. ... There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. .... It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

  Hannes Alfven

  Time, Science, Years

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• You must never stop dreaming. Face reality, yes. But don't stop with the way things are; dream of things as they ought to be. Dream of peace. Peace is rational and reasonable. War is irrational in this age and unwinnable.

  Jesse Jackson

  Love, Dream, War

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• What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists-whatever else they might be-might also be rational human beings ; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.

  William Blum

  Religious, People, Hypocrisy

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• So virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle, and by that which a prudent man would use to determine it. It is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency.

  Aristotle

  Lying, Mean, Men

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• I believe that decisions about the timing and manner of death belong to the individual as a human right. I believe it is wrong to withhold medical methods of terminating life painlessly and swiftly when an individual has a rational and clear-minded sustained wish to end his or her life.

  A.C. Grayling

  Believe, Decision, Wish

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• In my opinion, economists and sociologists are the people to whom we ought to turn more than we do for instruction in the grounds and foundations of all rational decisions.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  People, Decision, Foundation

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• The rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.

  Thomas Jefferson

  People, Voting, Reform

  "The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826".

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