Rationality Quotes - Page 6

• No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  God, Reason, Given

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.178, Simon and Schuster

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• It is a wonderful thing to see a first-rate philosopher at prayer. Tough-minded thinking and tenderhearted reverence are friends, not enemies. We have for too long separated the head from the heart, and we are the lesser for it. We love God with the mind and we love God with the heart. In reality, we are descending with the mind into the heart and there standing before God in ceaseless wonder and endless praise. As the mind and the heart work in concert, a kind of loving rationality pervades all we say and do. This brings unity to us and glory to God.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Prayer, Heart, Reality

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• Anger may bring extra energy, but it eclipses the best part of our brain: its rationality. The energy of anger is almost always unreliable.

  Dalai Lama

  Brain, Energy, May

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• Rationality is not just something you do so that you can make more money, it is a binding principle. Rationality is a really good idea. You must avoid the nonsense that is conventional in one's own time. It requires developing systems of thought that improve your batting average over time.

  Charlie Munger

  Average, Ideas, Principles

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• Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.

  Lord Dunsany

  Taken, Math, Statistics

  "My Ireland". Book by Lord Dunsany (Chapter XIX: Weeds and Moss), 1937.

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• To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.

  Ayn Rand

  Desire, Cost, Virtue

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.424, Penguin

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• Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice... Man has to be a man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice; he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Practice, Choices

  Ayn Rand (1984). “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, p.75, Penguin

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• What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.

  Diane Ravitch

  Running, Thinking, Errors

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• If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Communication, Men, Purpose

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• Aura of the mysterious is a minor perversion that a couple shares. A fetish that one of the two partners finds arousing, or a particular sexual scenario. Fantasies have to remain dirty. Cleanliness, scrupulousness and rationality are poison for eroticism.

  Volkmar Sigusch

  Couple, Dirty, Two

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Addressing the conclusions of The God Delusion point by point with the devastating insight of a molecular biologist turned theologian, Alister McGrath dismantles the argument that science should lead to atheism, and demonstrates instead that Dawkins has abandoned his much-cherished rationality to embrace an embittered manifesto of dogmatic atheist fundamentalism.

  Francis Collins

  Atheist, Atheism, Argument

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• Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.

  Roy Blount, Jr.

  Should Have, Mind, Affair

  Roy Blount, Jr. (2009). “Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South”, p.18, Knopf

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• The hope for the twentieth century rests on recognition that war and depression are man-made, and needless. They can be avoided in the future by turning from the nineteenth-century characteristics just mentioned (materialism, selfishness, false values, hypocrisy, and secret vices) and going back to other characteristics that our Western Society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding a increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self discipline.

  Carroll Quigley

  War, Compassion, Men

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• Buffett’s genius was largely a genius of character—of patience, discipline, and rationality.

  Roger Lowenstein

  Character, Discipline, Genius

  Roger Lowenstein (2013). “Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist”, p.13, Random House

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• In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best.

  Marvin Minsky

  Mind

  Marvin Minsky (1988). “Society Of Mind”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

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• The term "rational" and its variants (rationality, rationalism) are used in a lot of contexts in economic debate, both positively and negatively, but nearly always sloppily or dishonestly. A specimen I've seen on more occasions than I can count is the line (usually presented with a sense of witty originality) "if you are opposed to economic rationalism, you must be in favor of economic irrationalism"... I've come to the conclusion that the word "rational" has no meaning that cannot better be conveyed by some alternative term and that the best advice is probably to avoid it altogether.

  John Quiggin

  Witty, Advice, Alternatives

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• Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. [They are the two sides of a coin, so learning how to manage fear through learning, understanding, rationality, controlled imagination, preparation, mental focus (including distraction) and a gratitude attitude is very helpful.]

  Baruch Spinoza

  Gratitude, Attitude, Two Sides

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• People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up.

  Simon Blackburn

  Philosophical, Responsibility, Cutting

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• In a society where rationality has ruled so long, the church frequently fails to see that in forsaking the weekly pursuit of the transcendent, we have given up the only ground that was uniquely ours in this world. In attempting to make the church something that can attract and add value to secular mind-sets, we have turned our backs on our one true proposition - transcendence.

  James MacDonald

  Long, Mind, Church

  James MacDonald (2012). “Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.”, p.34, David C Cook

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• By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There’s no specific line, as you know.

  Leo Ornstein

  Lines, Way, Difficult

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• In healthy individuals, emotions don't distort rationality, they enhance it!

  Andy Hargreaves

  Leadership, Learning, Healthy

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• There is light in the world, and it is us!

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Light, World

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• I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Believe, Thinking, Fundamentals

  "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". Book by Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2010.

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• "The people" is that massive portion of a society that lives by its pathetic subjection to sheer immediacy or self-obviousness, and that therefore uncritically seizes upon the most simplistic and abstract ways of filling its vacuous self-consciousness. Not philosophy but dogma and rhetoric, not rationality but indoctrination and conditioning, provide the cultural junkfood by which the Many perfunctorily slake their thirst and hunger.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Self, People

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• Busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

  Stephen King

  Men, Kicking, Ladybugs

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