Irrational Quotes - Page 21

• Seurat and Signac mixed paintings with the dry and abstract laws of science. This approach, in my opinion, usually strays from the purpose of art in general. Because it means that one cannot expect from an artifact, that is created with mathematical laws, to establish an improbable and irrational relationship between the work and the viewer.

  Guity Novin

  Art, Mean, Law

  Negin magazine, No 77, p. 57, 1971.

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• America must deal once and for all with an utterly irrational health care financing system that allows private interests to make billions in profits from the pain and suffering of their fellow citizens. America is the only country in the industrialized world that does not provide tax-supported universal health care coverage in some form.

  Suzanne Gordon

  Country, Pain, America

  Suzanne Gordon, Claire M. Fagin (2007). “Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines”, p.308, Cornell University Press

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• I write because, exacting as it may be to do so, it is still more difficult to refrain, and because - however conscious of one's limitations one may be - there is always at the back of one's mind an irrational hope that this next book will be different: it will be the rounded achievement, the complete fulfilment. It never has been: yet I am still writing.

  Iris Origo

  Book, Writing, Achievement

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• Most men appear to think that the art of despotic government is statesmanship, and what men affirm to be unjust and inexpedient in their own case they are not ashamed of practicing towards others; they demand just rule for themselves, but where other men are concerned they care nothing about it. Such behavior is irrational; unless the one party is, and the other is not, born to serve, in which case men have a right to command, not indeed all their fellows, but only those who are intended to be subjects; just as we ought not to hunt mankind, whether for food or sacrifice . .

  Aristotle

  Art, Sacrifice, Men

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• The soul consists of two parts, one irrational and the other capable of reason. (Whether these two parts are really distinct in the sense that the parts of the body or of any other divisible whole are distinct, or whether though distinguishable in thought as two they are inseparable in reality, like the convex and concave of a curve, is a question of no importance for the matter in hand.)

  Aristotle

  Reality, Curves, Hands

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.23, Wordsworth Editions

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• Being a sports fan is a complex matter, in part irrational but not unworthy; a relief from the seriousness of the real world, with its unending pressures and often grave obligations.

  Richard Gilman

  Sports, Real, Fans

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• The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy - and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational

  Steve Allen

  Religious, Philosophy, Commitment

  Steve Allen (1996). “But Seriously--: Steve Allen Speaks His Mind”

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• The term [Americanization] invokes the transformation of the landscape into unnatural mechanical shapes, of night into day, of speed for its own sake, an irrational passion for novelty at the expense of quality, a worship of gimmickry.

  Robert Stone

  Passion, Night, Quality

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• A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death.

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  Real, Men, Thinking

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo, William Scott Wilson (2002). “Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai”, p.30, Kodansha International

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• If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesnt get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational.

  Lars Peter Hansen

  Mean, Agents, Concrete

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• The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of people, who are innately obedient to authority. This obedience-truth will then become a consensus-truth accepted by many individuals unable to stand alone against the majority. In this way, the truth promulgated by the propaganda system - however irrational - stands a good chance of becoming the consensus, and may come to seem self-evident common sense.

  David Edward

  Self, Common Sense, People

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• A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they've got terrible temperaments. And that is why we say that having a certain kind of temperament is more important than brains. You need to keep raw irrational emotion under control. You need patience and discipline and an ability to take losses and adversity without going crazy. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success

  Charlie Munger

  Crazy, Adversity, Loss

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• Hysteria is a chaotic and irrational emotional state caused by seeing how the world really operates.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Emotional, Hysteria, World

  Robert Anton Wilson (1982). “The Earth Will Shake: A Novel”, J P Tarcher

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• In the '90s it was irrational exuberance. Now it may be irrational doom and gloom.

  Robert Reich

  Doom And Gloom, May, Exuberance

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• As I'm writing, I start to see connections, and themes I didn't see, and that sparks other things. So then I go back and rewrite things or alter them. It's a combination of intuition and a lot of finessing. It becomes a combination of the rational and the irrational.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Writing, Intuition, Connections

  "'Synecdoche, New York' Director Charlie Kaufman'". Interview with Howard Feinstein, www.indiewire.com. October 24, 2008.

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• As for me, you wonder why I am a socialist. I'll tell you. It is because socialism is inevitable; because the present rotten and irrational system cannot endure; because the day is past for your man on horseback. The slaves won't stand for it. They are too many, and willy-nilly they'll drag down the would-be equestrian before he gets astride. You can't get away from them, and you'll have to swallow the whole slave-morality. It's not a nice mess, I'll allow. But it's been a-brewing and swallow it you must.

  Jack London

  Nice, Past, Men

  Jack London (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jack London (Illustrated)”, p.1507, Delphi Classics

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• Dilbert: Evolution must be true because it is a logical conclusion of the scientific method.
  Dogbert: But science is based on the irrational belief that because we cannot perceive reality all at once, things called time and cause and effect exist.
  Dilbert: That's what I was taught and that's what I believe.
  Dogbert: Sounds cultish.

  Scott Adams

  Believe, Science, Reality

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• The mystery lies in the irrationality by which you make appearance - if it is not irrational, you make illustration.

  Francis Bacon

  Lying, Illustration, Mystery

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• Science fiction has always had a dark side. There has been a touch of the irrational and absurd in the genre from the very beginning.

  Douglas Lain

  Dark, Sides, Fiction

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• Humans were eventually irrational creatures gifted with the power of rationality.

  L.E. Modesitt Jr.

  Gifted, Rationality, Humans

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• Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved-that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Silly, Men, Views

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Humanity is in the highest degree irrational, so that there is no prospect of influencing it by reasonable arguments. Against prejudice one can do nothing.

  Sigmund Freud

  Humanity, Religion, Atheism

  Sigmund freud (1975). “Gen Intro Psycho”, Pocket

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• Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull witted jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished prisoner shall die.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Independent, Long, Substance

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.422, Courier Corporation

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• The transfinite numbers are in a sense the new irrationalities [ ... they] stand or fall with the finite irrational numbers.

  Georg Cantor

  Fall, Irrational Numbers, Mathematics

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• Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Drinking, Laughing, Would Be

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

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