Irrational Quotes - Page 18

• A penny here, and a dollar there, placed at interest, goes on accumulating, and in this way the desired result is attained. It requires some training, perhaps, to accomplish this economy, but when once used to it, you will find there is more satisfaction in rational saving than in irrational spending.

  P. T. Barnum

  Training, Dollars, Goes On

  P. T. Barnum (1999). “Art of Money Getting”, p.10, Applewood Books

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• Sleep is the gateway to those nightly visitations of the irrational.

  Gayle Greene

  Sleep, Gateways, Visitation

  Gayle Greene (2009). “Insomniac”, p.39, Univ of California Press

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• Faith is not a leap in the dark; it’s the exact opposite. It’s a commitment based on evidence… It is irrational to reduce all faith to blind faith and then subject it to ridicule. That provides a very anti-intellectual and convenient way of avoiding intelligent discussion.

  John Lennox

  Commitment, Dark, Intelligent

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• Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

  Gunter Grass

  Art, Puritan, Hard

  New Statesman and Society interview, 1990.

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• The man who is thus outside the confines of every value-combination, and has become the exclusive representative of an individual value, is metaphysically an outcast, for his autonomy presupposes the resolution and disintegration of all system into its individual elements; such a man is liberated from values and from style, and can be influenced only by the irrational.

  Hermann Broch

  Men, Style, He Man

  Hermann Broch (2011). “The Sleepwalkers”, p.887, Vintage

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• The love song must be born into the realm of the irrational, absurd, the distracted, the melancholic, the obsessive, the insane for the love song is the noise of love itself and love is, of course, a form of madness.

  Nick Cave

  Song, Love Is, Insane

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• Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Mean, Thinking, Effort

  "The Character of Physical Law". Book by Richard P. Feynman, 1965.

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• We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and arational.

  Terry Eagleton

  Mean, Reflection, Self

  "Culture conundrum" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. May 20, 2008.

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• Irrational beliefs are culturally accepted delusions.

  Robert Todd Carroll

  Belief, Accepted, Delusion

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• Ultimately, love is only possible for humans insofar as they can achieve some comprehension of their place and their duties and their values and their significance within the whole of life, of society, of spirituality, of history, of nature. In all merely partial or fragmentary perspectives, there necessarily remain undigested irrational factors, surds that one is merely tolerating and not truly respecting as essential and integral to the whole of what we are.

  Kenny Smith

  Love, Philosophy, Perspective

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• Irrational lenders come and go - mostly they go!

  John G. Stumpf

  Banking, Comes And Goes, Lenders

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• In the search for character and commitment, we must rid ourselves of our inherited, even cherished biases and prejudices. Character, ability and intelligence are not concentrated in one sex over the other, nor in persons with certain accents or in certain races or in persons holding degrees from some universities over others. When we indulge ourselves in such irrational prejudices, we damage ourselves most of all and ultimately assure ourselves of failure in competition with those more open and less biased.

  J. Irwin Miller

  Sex, Character, Commitment

  "Cummins Mourns the Loss of Visionary Leader". investor.cummins.com. August 16, 2004.

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• It is a strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Time, Ill Will, People

  "The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings".

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• It is slightly chilling to realize there are rational, functional people up there employed to spot, nurture, and exploit those down here among us who are irrational and can barely cope. If you want to know how stupid you’re perceived to be by the people up there, count the unsolicited junk mail you receive. If you get a lot, you’re perceived to be alluringly stupid.

  Jon Ronson

  Stupid, People, Junk

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• Any fear associated with giving to God's kingdom is irrational. It's on par with a farmer who, out of fear of losing his seed, refuses to plant his fields.

  Andy Stanley

  Fear, Giving, Kingdoms

  Andy Stanley (2015). “Fields of Gold”, p.9, NavPress

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• Programmers are as emotional and irrational as normal people

  Douglas Crockford

  Emotional, People, Normal

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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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• Congress remains in total denial as our liberties are rapidly fading before our eyes. The process is propelled by unwarranted fear and ignorance as to the true meaning of liberty. It is driven by economic myths, fallacies and irrational good intentions.

  Ron Paul

  Ignorance, Eye, Liberty

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• These 3 topics will always generate 100+ comments of irrational/ridiculous people: Taxes, tipping, and spending on weddings.

  Ramit Sethi

  People, Entrepreneur, Topics

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• Advances are made by those with at least a touch of irrational confidence in what they can do.

  Lillian Hellman

  Confidence, Made, Can Do

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• To struggle when hope is banished! To live when life's salt is gone! To dwell in a dream that's vanished! To endure, and go calmly on! The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.

  Joanna Baillie

  Dream, Stupid, Struggle

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• It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.

  Arthur Eddington

  Law, Mind, May

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “The Philosophy of Physical Science: Tarner Lectures (1938)”, p.179, Cambridge University Press

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• Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers ... is a convenient myth [which] simplifies the laws of arithmetic ... so physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of existence... The conceptional scheme of physical objects is [likewise] a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Math, Numbers, Law

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• As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

  Cyril Connolly

  Life, Fear, Publishing Books

  Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 10

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• I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational.

  Barry Commoner

  Reason, Shirts, No Reason

  "At 90, an Environmentalist From the '70s Still Has Hope". Interview With Thomas Vinciguerra, www.nytimes.com. June 19, 2007.

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