Rational Quotes - Page 7

• I decided that life rationally considered seemed pointless and futile, but it is still interesting in a variety of ways, including the study of science. So why not carry on, following the path of scientific hedonism? Besides, I did not have the courage for the more rational procedure of suicide.

  Robert S. Mulliken

  Suicide, Science, Interesting

  Robert S. Mulliken (2012). “Life of a Scientist: An Autobiographical Account of the Development of Molecular Orbital Theory”, p.24, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Obsession is so extreme and so hard to imagine with the rational mind that it has a science-fiction-like quality to it-it's almost as if the obsessed one has been taken over by a replica, a pod, a facsimile of the rational person.

  Susan Cheever

  Taken, Mind, Quality

  Susan Cheever (2009). “Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction”, p.56, Simon and Schuster

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• I do not see why the axiom of Prudence should not be questioned, when it conflicts with present inclination, on a ground similar to that on which Egoists refuse to admit the axiom of Rational Benevolence. If the Utilitarian has to answer the question, 'Why should I sacrifice my own happiness for the greater happiness of another?' it must surely be admissible to ask the Egoist 'Why should I sacrifice a present pleasure for a greater one in the future? Why should I concern myself about my own future feelings any more than about the feelings of other persons?'

  Henry Sidgwick

  Sacrifice, Psychology, Feelings

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• Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Ethics And Morals, Morality, Moral Ethics

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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 legal parlance, that is called 'the rational person test,' ... That's where somebody else says, 'Even though we have no idea what this person would want in this circumstance in which they cannot themselves tell us what they want, a 'rational' person - meaning, myself - in that circumstance would want to die.' So you move very quickly from so-called voluntary euthanasia to involuntary euthanasia. These legal and medical developments are not simply hypothetical They're in the courts right now.

  Richard John Neuhaus

  Moving, Ideas, Development

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• In our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling - should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Mean, Patriotic, Men

  graf Leo Tolstoy (1903). “Essays and Letters /by Leo Tolstoy ; Translated by Aylmer Maude”

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• Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sea, Rights, Territory

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “The Journals”

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• Let it never be forgotten that it is not by means of war that states are rendered fit for the enjoyment of constitutional freedom; on the contrary, whilst terror and bloodshed reign in the land, involving men's minds in the extremities of hopes and fears, there can be no process of thought, no education going on, by which alone can a people be prepared for the enjoyment of rational liberty.

  Richard Cobden

  War, Mean, Men

  Richard Cobden (1835). “England, Ireland, and America”, p.44

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• The natural scientists of the previous age knew less than we do and believed they were very close to the goal: we have taken very great steps in its direction and now discover we are still very far away from it. With the most rational philosophers an increase in their knowledge is always attended by an increased conviction of their ignorance.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Taken, Ignorance, Science

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• The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.

  William James

  Sorry, Apology, May

  William James (2012). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.243, Courier Corporation

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• The oceans are the planet's last great living wilderness, man's only remaining frontier on earth, and perhaps his last chance to produce himself a rational species.

  John Culliney

  Ocean, Men, Rivers

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• Strings of coincidence can strengthen us in the determination to follow our deepest intuitions even when they run counter to conventional wisdom and logic and cannot be subjected to rational explanation.

  Robert Moss

  Running, Determination, Words Of Wisdom

  Robert Moss (2010). “The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination”, p.122, New World Library

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• Outside of the marriage context, can you think of any other rational basis, reason, for a state using sexual orientation as a factor in denying homosexuals benefits or imposing burdens on them? Is there any other rational decision-making that the government could make? Denying them a job, not granting them benefits of some sort, any other decision?

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Jobs, Gay, Thinking

  "These are the exchanges you need to read from today’s Supreme Court arguments". Supreme Court arguments, www.washingtonpost.com. March 26, 2013.

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• I have yet to meet the famous Rational Economic Man theorists describe. Real people have always done inexplicable things from time to time, and they show no sign of stopping.

  Charles S. Sanford, Jr.

  Real, Men, People

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• He had by now divested himself of schoolboy attitudes. He was unburdened by the desire to be a martyr or a hero. Any thoughts in that direction, Belgica effectively had quashed. Heroism in the corrupt sense of the age almost by definition, meant wanton self-sacrifice and bungling. For neither had he any taste. He wanted rational attainment; victory, but not at any price. No point upon the globe was worth the cost of a single life.

  Roland Huntford

  Life, Attitude, Hero

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• As we enter the 21st Century it is clear that we have entered an unprecedented global age in which our diverse cultures, religions, philosophies, worldviews and perspectives encounter one another in the marketplace of our global village. It is now clear that our future sustainability on this planet calls for radical advances in our rational and human capacities to negotiate the powerful forces between worlds as the human family moves towards a sustainable global civilization.

  Ashok Gangadean

  Powerful, Philosophy, Moving

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• If you ask what you are going to do about global warming, the only rational answer is to change the way in which we do transportation, energy production, agriculture and a good deal of manufacturing. The problem originates in human activity in the form of the production of goods.

  Barry Commoner

  Agriculture, Energy, Answers

  "At 90, an Environmentalist From the '70s Still Has Hope". Interview With Thomas Vinciguerra, www.nytimes.com. June 19, 2007.

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• Man can sin against nature in two ways. First, when he sins against his specific rational nature, acting contrary to reason. In this sense, we can say that every sin is a sin against man's nature, because it is against man's right reason.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Christian, Men, Two

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• I am once more seated under my own vine and fig tree ... and hope to spend the remainder of my days in peaceful retirement, making political pursuits yield to the more rational amusement of cultivating the earth.

  George Washington

  Hope, Peace, Retirement

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1796). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”

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• Comedy mocks the vanity of visions of rational control. The person who can joke amidst a confrontation with evil, like the quick-witted Spider-Man, must be reconciled to the permanent imperfections of a corrupted world populated by fallen creatures.

  Peter Leithart

  Men, Vanity, Evil

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• My father was the most rational and the most dispassionate of men.

  Simon Newcomb

  Boyfriend, Dad, Father

  Simon Newcomb (1903). “The reminiscences of an astronomer”, Harper and Brothers

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• I am devoting my lecture in this seminar to a discussion of the possibility that we are now entering a Jewish century, a time when the spirit of the community, the non-ideological blend of the emotional and rational and the resistance to categories and forms will emerge through the forces of anti-nationalism to provide us with a new kind of society. I call this process the Judaization of Christianity because Christianity will be the vehicle through which this society becomes Jewish.

  Martin A. Siegel

  Emotional, Community, Resistance

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• I'm optimistic about Turkey's prospects for reaching the E.U.'s standards of development, governance, and democracy, whether inside or outside the E.U. Provided you have a prosperous, rational society in Turkey that can interact with Europe and the West, I don't really care what kind of institutional arrangement you have. The point to make about Turkey and Europe is that it's a very long, drawn-out process. What's important is that the process not be stopped, that Turkey and Europe evolve in the right direction, on a path of convergence. Convergence is the name of the game.

  Andrew Mango

  Optimistic, Long, Democracy

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