Irrational Quotes - Page 17

• You need to go and find someone to teach you the rudiments of irrational discourse.

  Larry Wall

  Needs, Computer, Teach

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• I still believe that any country understands that if they use nuclear weapons, they will be wiped out of existence. They could be irrational in many ways, but I don't think they're irrational to the point that they're ready to annihilate their own country.

  Mohamed ElBaradei

  Country, Believe, Thinking

  "Mohamed ElBaradei: What I've Learned" by John H. Richardson, www.esquire.com. January 31, 2011.

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• It's the irrational things that interest me.

  Harrison Birtwistle

  Interest

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• In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?

  Alan Lightman

  Science, Cosmos, World

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.29, Vintage

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• I have irrational fears, and they all go back to losing my father as a kid. I've never gotten over it.

  Tim Allen

  Father, Kids, Irrational Fear

  “Tim Allen: What I've Learned” by Cal Fussman, www.esquire.com. October 11, 2011.

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• This 'oh let's hug it out' without taking any responsibility is exactly the problem. ... We are not silly irrational little girls. We are running a serious business with investments from the biggest VCs in the Valley.

  Sarah Lacy

  Girl, Running, Silly

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• An exotic and irrational entertainment.

  Samuel Johnson

  Funny, Humorous, Exotic

  Lives of the English Poets "Hughes" (1779 - 1781)

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• It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.

  Northrop Frye

  Block, Emotional, Thinking

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.83, Princeton University Press

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• Every attempt to explain human behavior, especially the irrational, must as a matter of course end in simplification.

  Morton Irving Seiden

  Matter, Behavior, Ends

  Morton Irving Seiden (1968). “The paradox of hate: a study in ritual murder”

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• A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, monster incomprehensible, raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Women, Knowing, Evil

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• The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.

  George Santayana

  Family, Race, Class

  George Santayana (1954). “The Life of Reason: Or, The Phases of Human Progress”, p.184, Prabhat Prakashan

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• For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Real, Men, Occupy Yourself

  W. Somerset Maugham (1930). “Cakes and Ale”

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• Gender, race, ethnicity - these are all morally neutral. But homosexuality is - involves voluntary sexual conduct with serious public health, social, sociological implications. It's not irrational to discriminate on that basis.

  Scott Lively

  Race, Ethnicity, Serious

  "Uganda Punishing Gays: 'Sodomy Is Not A Human Right' Says Evangelical Leader". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. February 27, 2014.

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• Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by other people, we get indoctrinated and we get influenced by advertising.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Ambition, Thinking, People

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• The Euro is a conquest of sovereignty. It gives us a margin of manoeuvre. Its a tool to help us master globalisation and help us resist irrational shifts in the market.

  Dominique Strauss-Kahn

  Giving, Tools, Helping

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• There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

  Albert Ellis

  Sex, Men, Evidence

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• Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad avoidable disappointments that begin in a thoroughly irrational hope.

  Shalom Auslander

  Disappointment, Dysfunction, Anomalies

  Shalom Auslander (2012). “Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel”, p.40, Penguin

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• In Scripture, faith involves placing trust in what you have reason to believe is true. Faith is not a blind, irrational leap into the dark. So faith and reason cooperate on a biblical view of faith. They are not intrinsically hostile.

  J.P. Moreland

  Believe, Dark, Biblical

  J. P. Moreland, William Lane Craig (2009). “Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview”, p.18, InterVarsity Press

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• There is nothing quite so gentle, deep, and irrational as running--and nothing quite so savage, so wild.

  Bernd Heinrich

  Running, Savages, Gentle

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• I approach my character with the question: What would an animal think? How would an animal respond? A lot of times, it's quick action and no fear, and sometimes it's irrational fear. You don't always know.

  Victoria Pratt

  Character, Animal, Thinking

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• It can be of no practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it surely would be intolerable not to know.

  Edward Charles Titchmarsh

  Education, Math, Would Be

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• Would a watermelon in the midst of a chase sequence not be, in its own organic way, emblematic of our entire misunderstood enterprise? At once totally logical and perfectly irrational?

  W. D. Richter

  Misunderstood, Way, Logical

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• The primary problem is not to provide the public with the knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of .. Rather, the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth.

  Richard Lewontin

  Stars, Imagination, Intellectual

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• People are irrational - and predictably so.

  Dan Ariely

  People

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• It would be unwise to condemn as irrational the practice of devouring the heart and liver of an adversary while yet warm. For the highest spiritual working one must choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force; a male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory.

  Aleister Crowley

  Spiritual, Children, Heart

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