Rationality Quotes - Page 7

• And that, I suppose, is what I'd been trying to tell my mother that day: that her faith in justice and rationality was misplaced, that we couldn't overcome after all, that all the education and good intentions in the world couldn't help you plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course.

  Barack Obama

  Mother, Giving, Justice

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.96, Canongate Books

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• There must be only three supreme values which govern a person's life: Reason, Purpose, and Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge--Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve--Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.

  Ayn Rand

  Honesty, Integrity, Self Esteem

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• Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.

  Warren Buffett

  Investing Money, Buffets, Effortless

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.163, John Wiley & Sons

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• It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality

  Gilles Deleuze

  Monsters, Slumber, Reason

  Gilles Deleuze, FeÌl?ix Guattari (2004). “Anti-Oedipus”, p.122, A&C Black

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• If there is no wisdom, rationality can be very dangerous.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

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• Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given.

  Anton Chekhov

  Inspirational, Men, Wild Life

  'Uncle Vanya' (1897) act 1

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Struggle, Order, People

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• Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence.
  Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality.

  Robert Graves

  Humorous, Poetry, Fancy

  "The Crane Bag". Book by Robert Graves. "The Case for Xanthippe", 1969.

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• Organizational effectiveness does not lie in that narrow minded concept called rationality. It lies in the blend of clearheaded logic and powerful intuition

  Henry Mintzberg

  Powerful, Lying, Effectiveness

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• You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn't nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.

  Anne Lamott

  Space, Giving, Intuition

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.112, Anchor

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• Mr. Edison worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination. If a person asked him if he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say, "No, I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.".

  Thomas A. Edison

  Steps, Problem, Discouraged

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• I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.

  Jane Austen

  Strength, Hate, Women

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• It is for this reason that rationality is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species...even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.

  Bertrand Russell

  Dream, Men, Reason

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• It is important to reclaim for humanity the ground that has been taken from it by various arbitrarily narrow formulations of the demands of rationality

  Amartya Sen

  Taken, Humanity, Important

  Amartya Sen (2004). “Rationality and Freedom”, p.51, Harvard University Press

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