Irrational Quotes - Page 2

• Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?

  Alan Greenspan

  Past, Japan, Risk

  Alan Greenspan's speech at the Annual Dinner and Francis Boyer Lecture of The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., www.federalreserve.gov. December 5, 1996.

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• The more I work with the body, keeping my assumptions in a temporary state of reservation, the more I appreciate and sympathize with a given disease. The body no longer appears as a sick or irrational demon, but as a process with its own inner logic and wisdom.

  George MacDonald

  Health, Exercise, Appreciate

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• Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.

  Bill Cosby

  Motivational, Baby, Children

  Twitter post from Nov 06, 2009

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• Men, believing in myths, will always fear something terrible, everlasting punishment as certain or probable . . . Men base all these fears not on mature opinions, but on irrational fancies, that they are more disturbed by fear of the unknown than by facing facts. Peace of mind lies in being delivered from all these fears.

  Epicurus

  Lying, Believe, Men

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• We must not demonstrate any arrogance, and we must refrain from any irrational or undemocratic behavior.

  Chen Shui-bian

  Arrogance, Prejudice, Behavior

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• The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space-each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.

  Randall Munroe

  Space, Decision, Culture

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• Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.

  Aldous Huxley

  Powerful, Ignorance, Knowledge

  Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

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• We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of others and irrational mania of those who hate or condemn us.

  Thomas Merton

  Forgiveness, Hate, Compassion

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• But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?

  Alan Greenspan

  Past, Japan, Unexpected

  Alan Greenspan (2008). “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World”, p.177, Penguin

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• ... there is an irrational, cultish tendency in many intellectual movements, and Objectivism, alas, is no exception. Ayn Rand's personal obsession with loyalty did little to discourage this trend.... Rand had often protested, 'Protect me from my followers!'

  Nathaniel Branden

  Loyalty, Intellectual, Followers

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• Every song has a composer, every book has an author, every car has a maker, every painting has a painter, and every building has a builder. So it isn't irrational to take this simple logic a little further and say that nature must have had a Maker. It would be irrational to believe that it made itself.

  Ray Comfort

  Song, Nature, Believe

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• Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.

  Erich Fromm

  Sides, Authority, Built

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.18, Open Road Media

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• Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.

  George Jean Nathan

  Music, Art, Mad

  George Jean Nathan, Arnold Leslie Lazarus (1990). “A George Jean Nathan Reader”, p.79, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do.

  Walter Lippmann

  Done, Reason, Ought

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

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• Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.

  Erich Fromm

  Motivation, Real, Passion

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• A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for instinctual drives must be satisfied

  Cyril Connolly

  Emotion, Reason, Violent

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• We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.

  Neal Stephenson

  Smart, Urban Legends, Self

  "Snow Crash". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1992.

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• Love doesn't need reason. It speaks from the irrational wisdom of the heart.

  Deepak Chopra

  Life And Love, Yoga, Heart

  FaceBook post by Deepak Chopra from Feb 15, 2011

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• Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger to irrational beings.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Suffering

  Jonathan Edwards (1821). “A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections: In Three Parts ...”, p.10

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• Now everything was changed. She walked about with cautious, anxious steps, staring constantly at the ground, on the lookout for things that crept and crawled. Bushes were dangerous, and so were sea grass and rain water. There were little animals everywhere. They could turn up between the covers of a book, flattened and dead, for the fact is that creeping animals, tattered animals, and dead animals are with us all our lives, from beginning to end. Grandmother tried to discuss this with her, to no avail. Irrational terror is so hard to deal with.

  Tove Jansson

  Fear, Rain, Book

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• Everyone declares that love is irrational, and yet everytime this statement is proven correct, they profess amazement. They seem to assume that love will make an exception in their case. It never does.

  Jessica Zafra

  Love Is, Doe, Assuming

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• For too long we have placed an irrational burden upon our oceans by demanding only a narrow selection of species, which has led to unsustainable fishing and economic practices. If we instead ask the ocean what it is willing to supply, we engage in an inherently more sustainable relationship.

  Barton Seaver

  Ocean, Fishing, Practice

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• Irrational judgements lead to new experience.

  Sol LeWitt

  New Experiences, Judgement

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• Fear is ugly because it makes you irrational. Fear makes you jump to conclusions. Fear makes you reactionary.

  David Heinemeier Hansson

  Irrational Fear, Ugly, Conclusion

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• Whenever you are in the world of the tonal, you should be an impeccable tonal; no time for irrational crap. But whenever you are in the world of the nagual, you should also be impeccable; no time for rational crap. For the warrior intent is the gate in between. It closes completely behind him when he goes either way

  Carlos Castaneda

  Warrior, World, Way

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