Rationality Quotes - Page 8

• 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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• 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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• Workers and their families may starve to death in the New World Order of economic rationality, but diamond necklaces are cheaper in elegant New York shops, thanks to the miracle of the market.

  Noam Chomsky

  New York, Order, Miracle

  Noam Chomsky (1997). “World Orders, Old and New”, p.128, Pluto Press

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• In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.

  Krzysztof Kieslowski

  Believe, Too Much, Lost

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• The neural processes underlying that which we call creativity have nothing to do with rationality. That is to say, if we look at how the brain generates creativity, we will see that it is not a rational process at all; creativity is not born out of reasoning.

  Rodolfo Llinas

  Creativity, Brain, Looks

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• The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.

  Robert Greene

  Real, Facts, Intense

  50 Cent, Robert Greene (2010). “The 50th Law”, p.46, Profile Books

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• I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.

  Wernher von Braun

  Science, Origin Of Life, Design

  Wernher Von Braun (2007). “The Voice of Dr. Wernher Von Braun: An Anthology”, Collectors Guide Pub

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• The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball.

  Warren Buffett

  Investing Money, People, Triumph

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

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• The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Weapons, Rulers

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• In the past, when people criticized me for asking unexpected questions, I felt ashamed. Now I realize that normal people are acting in a superficial and often false manner. So rather than let them make me feel bad, I express my annoyance. It's my way of trying to strike a blow for logic and rationality.

  John Elder Robison

  Blow, Past, People

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• Who is the brave man--he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Fear, Men, Imagination

  Geraldine Brooks (2006). “March”, p.106, Penguin

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• The people I know who seem to make unusual efforts at rationality, are unusually honest, or, failing that, at least have unusually bad social skills.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Skills, People, Effort

  "Honesty: Beyond Internal Truth". lesswrong.com. June 06, 2009.

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• The number of hypotheses available to explain any given phenomenon is infinite.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Numbers, Infinite, Given

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  Happiness is man's greatest aim in life. Tranquility and rationality are the cornerstones of happiness.

  Epicurus

  Happiness, Ambition, Men

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• Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Use, Masters

  "Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians". lesswrong.com. April 20, 2011.

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• Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from ordinary standards of evaluation, can only corrupt this fabric, just as a contradiction can corrupt a system of logic, allowing falsehoods to proliferate through it.

  Steven Pinker

  Ideas, People, Ordinary

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• Reason is not like the goods sold in the market places--the more plentiful they are, the less they are worth. Reason's worth waxes with her abundance. But were she sold in the market, it is only the wise man who would understand her true value.

  Khalil Gibran

  Wise, Men, Abundance

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• Whoever desires to live among men has to obey their laws this is what the secular morality of Western civilization comes down to. ... Rationality in the form of such obedience swallows up everything, even the freedom to think.

  Max Horkheimer

  Men, Thinking, Law

  Max Horkheimer (1970). “Zeitschrift Fur Sozialforschung”

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• Part of the sexual revolution is bringing rationality to sexuality. Because when you don't embrace sexuality in a normal way, you get the twisted kinds, and the kinds that destroy lives.

  Hugh Hefner

  Way, Revolution, Normal

  "A Visit with 'Playboy' Founder Hugh Hefner". Interview with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. September 6, 2003.

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• The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience ... produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.

  Max Horkheimer

  Machines, Inversions, Produce

  "The Essential Frankfurt School Reader" by Max Horkheimer, (p. 34), 1982.

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• The dilemma of Brechtian performance is that, for all of Brecht's emphasis on rationality and the undermining of theatrical illusion, the actor must convincingly portray something that she is not.

  Philip Auslander

  Actors, Illusion, Brecht

  Philip Auslander (2002). “From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism”, p.33, Routledge

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• This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Self, Hypocrisy, Moments

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.218, Library of America

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• The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Real, Character, Mean

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.204, Library of America

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• I think moral philosophy is speculation on how we ought to live together done by people who have very little clue how people work. So I think most moral philosophy is disconnected from the species that we happen to be. In fact, they like it that way. Many moral philosophers insist that morality grows out of our rationality, that it applies to any rational being anywhere in the universe, and that it is not based on contingent or coincidental facts about our evolution.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Philosophy, Thinking, People

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Institutionalized desublimation thus appears to be an aspect of the "conquest of transcendence" achieved by the one-dimensional society. Just as this society tends to reduce, and even absorb opposition (the qualitative difference!) in the realm of politics and higher culture, so it does in the instinctual sphere. The result is the atrophy of the mental organs for grasping the contradictions and the alternatives and, in the one remaining dimension of technological rationality, the Happy Consciousness comes to prevail.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Differences, Alternatives, Dimensions

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.82, Routledge

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