Unreasonable Quotes - Page 8

• Great teams are usually small-under fifty in total head count. (There are few examples of a team made up of hundreds of people who created anything revolutionary.) Big teams aren't conducive to revolutionary products because such products require a high degree of single-mindedness, unity, and unreasonable passion.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Team, Passion, People

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• Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Degrees, Would Be

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• It is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness which the nature of the particular subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.

  Aristotle

  Mind, Demand, Accepting

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.5, Wordsworth Editions

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• Luckily, unreasonable expectations go hand in hand with naive young scientists. The more naive the better - otherwise we would never have the audacity to try and build a 22,000-mile-high space elevator or some sprawling underwater hotel.

  Daniel H. Wilson

  Hands, Space, Expectations

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• Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy.

  Ayn Rand

  Fighting, People, Enemy

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.329, Penguin

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• I'm a reasonable guy, but I've just experienced some very unreasonable things.

  Kurt Russell

  Guy, Reasonable

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• Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

  Book, Irritation, People

  "A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Told for the First Time".

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• It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Atheist, Civilization

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• Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.

  Victor Hugo

  Heart, Love Is, Roots

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• I ought not to doubt the steadiness of your affection. Yet such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest, and thus it is, that i always feel revived, as by a new convinction, when your words tell me I am dear to you; and wanting these, I relapse into doubt and often into despondency.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Real, Doubt, Affection

  Ann Radcliffe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated)”, p.716, Delphi Classics

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• It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

  P. D. James

  Stars, Intelligent, Credit

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.14, Vintage

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• No emotion is, in itself, a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. but they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Judgement, Emotion

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• If experience be consulted, it will be found there is no action, however abominable, that has not received the applause of some people. Parricide - the sacrifice of children - robbery - usurpation - cruelty - intolerance - prostitution, have all in their turn been licensed actions, and have been deemed laudable and meritorious deeds with some nations of the earth. Above all, Religion has consecrated the most unreasonable, the most revolting customs.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Children, Sacrifice, People

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• Reparations,” said Jem very suddenly, setting down the pen he was holding. Will looked at him in puzzlement. “Is this a game? We just blurt out whatever word comes next to mind? In that case mine is ‘genuphobia’. It means an unreasonable fear of knees.” “What’s the word for a perfectly reasonable fear of annoying idiots?” inquired Jessamine.

  Cassandra Clare

  Mean, Games, Mind

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Clockwork Prince”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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• You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Men, Years

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• Tantra is the hot blood of spiritual practice. It smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness; a thunderbolt path, swift, joyful, and fierce. There is no authentic Tantra without profound commitment, discipline, courage, and a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Spiritual, Buddhist, Commitment

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• Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Real, Guarantees That

  "The Politics of Ignorance" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 2, 2005.

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• My father was a Little League dictator. That really affected me, his control-freakery, his impunity, his arbitrary unreasonable power.

  Junot Diaz

  Father, League, Arbitrary

  Interview with Meghan O'Rourke, www.slate.com. April 8, 2008.

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• Every artist is unreasonable, because he or she is doing something that hasn't been done before.

  Eli Broad

  Artist, Done

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• I don't think people should be encouraged to look like Kate Moss; I think that's unreasonable. I think the normal human body should be glorified. By the same token, if you need a stick to wash yourself, you're not healthy.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Thinking, People, Healthy

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• Why had we come to the moon? The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk an even a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me that there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made to go about safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. ... against his interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and he must go.

  H. G. Wells

  Adventure, Men, Moon

  H. G. Wells (2016). “H. G. WELLS Ultimate Collection: 120+ Science Fiction Classics, Novels & Stories; Including Scientific, Political and Historical Works: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, Modern Utopia, A Short History of the World, What Is Coming, The Story of the Last Trump…”, p.2172, e-artnow

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• I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn't change them. That hurt.

  Abraham Verghese

  Dream, Hurt, Feelings

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• Foolish. Stupid. I knew it. I knew my reaction was unreasonable, bu the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. Blaise Pascal said that, and I've always found it to be true.

  Megan Hart

  Stupid, Heart, Pascal

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• It is easy to be disgruntled if you are denied rights and freedoms to which you feel entitled. But if you are not coherent, if you cannot put into words what it is that displeases you and why it is unfair and should change, then you are dismissed as an unreasonable whiner. You may be lectured about perseverance and patience, life as a test, the need to accept the higher wisdom of others.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Life, Perseverance, Rights

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2010). “Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations”, p.161, Simon and Schuster

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• If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment.

  Jane Austen

  Gratitude, Attachment, Two

  Jane Austen (2008). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.371, Waking Lion Press

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