Rational Quotes - Page 14

• There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Errors, Propose

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• The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed

  William James

  Lonely, Admiration, Feds

  William James (2012). “Memories and Studies”, p.178, The Floating Press

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• Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes.

  Aristotle

  Art, Causes, Action

  Aristotle (2016). “Pocket Aristotle”, p.170, Simon and Schuster

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• Indeed, so far from being humorous, the male American is the most abnormally serious creature who ever existed.. It is only fair to admit that he can exaggerate, but even his exaggeration has a rational basis. It is not founded on wit or fancy; it does not spring from any poetic imagination.

  Oscar Wilde

  Spring, Humorous, Imagination

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• We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?

  Norman Mailer

  Art, Civilization, Effort

  "Cannibals and Christians". Book by Norman Mailer, 1966.

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• In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and certainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe.

  Ayn Rand

  Morning, Adventure, Childhood

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.816, Hamilton Books

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• Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work, pride is the result.

  Ayn Rand

  Work, Pride, Men

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.23, Penguin

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• When art seems to be empty of meaning, as no doubt some of the abstract painting of our own day actually does seem, what the painting says, indeed what the artist is shrieking at the top of his voice, is that life has become empty of all rational content and coherence, and that, in times like these, is far from a meaningless statement.

  Lewis Mumford

  Art, Times Like These, Voice

  Lewis Mumford (2000). “Art and Technics”, p.21, Columbia University Press

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• If "freedom" means, first of all, the responsibility of every individual for the rational determination of his own personal, professional and social existence, then there is no greater fear than that of the establishment of general freedom.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Determination, Freedom, Mean

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.

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• A compassionate willingess is required - as is the courage to live before the fact, before the understanding, before any rational support or certainty, to live the moment to its natural peak and conclusion, and to accept with dignity whatever joy, grief, misfortune, or unexpectedness occurs.

  Clark Moustakas

  Grief, Support, Joy

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• Love is a choice -- not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile.

  Carter Heyward

  Love Is, Choices, Guile

  Carter Heyward (1984). “Our Passion for Justice: Images of Power, Sexuality, and Liberation”

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• Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for accumulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Society, Leisure, Wealth

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1850). “The optimist”, p.115

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• I'm a very rational person but I pray every day.

  Emmy Rossum

  Praying, Accurate, Persons

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• It is only the belief and the confidence we have in a God why man is able to understand his own social institutions, and move and live like a rational human being.

  Marcus Garvey

  Moving, Godly, Men

  Marcus Garvey (2012). “Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey”, p.31, Courier Corporation

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• To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

  Walter Cronkite

  Yield, People, Democracy

  "Final Words: Cronkite's Vietnam Commentary". "All Things Considered" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. July 18, 2009.

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• The Art of Seeing. It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean, to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis.

  Luis Barragan

  Art, Mean, Vision

  Acceptance speech fot the Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1980.

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• Without passion, any rational person would give up!

  Steve Jobs

  Giving Up, Passion, Persons

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• All rational beings have an agency of their own; and according to their own choice they will be saved or damned.

  Brigham Young

  Agency, Choices, Saved

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• Americans are cultured from their earliest years to be either one-sided douloi or one-sided banausoi, i.e. either they cannot think abstractively/conceptually/orchestrally or else they can only think abstractively. Thinking in a truly rational dialectic between intuition and intellect is just beyond the reach of our nation of emotionalist helots. What prevails among us truly has to be called not thinking but "thinking," a pathetic surrogate for actual thinking for the benefit of existentially or modally crippled mentalities.

  Kenny Smith

  Thinking, Years, Intuition

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• It is not intuitive ease I am after, but rather a point of view which is sufficiently definite to clear up some difficulties, and to be criticized in rational terms. (Bohr's complementarity cannot be so criticized, I fear; it can only be accepted or denounced - perhaps as being ad hoc, or as being irrational, or as being hopelessly vague.)

  Karl Popper

  Science, Views, Ease

  Karl Popper, W.W. Bartley, III (2013). “Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics: From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.103, Routledge

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• Whenever I was confronted in the schoolyard, I found some way to avoid the fight. I ran for it. I backed down. Psychologically and emotionally, that isn't a low-cost course of action for most boys. You avoid a physical beating, but you pay a real social and psychological cost for it. Those moments of walking away from fights, even though I knew it was the rational and civilized thing to do, cost me tremendously.

  Jonathan Gottschall

  Real, Fighting, Boys

  "A Talk With The Savage English Professor". Interview with Sam Harris, www.thedailybeast.com. March 5, 2015.

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• The primary mode of experiencing images is non-verbal... but once it's brought out into the light of the day, what's understood by the subconscious intuitive mind can be better grasped by the conscious rational mind. Aligning the two produces powerful results.

  John Paul Caponigro

  Powerful, Two, Light

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• Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. [...] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Government, Effort

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.207, Knopf

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• It is commonly said that if rational argument is so seldom the cause of conviction, philosophical apologists must largely be wasting their shot. The premise is true, but the conclusion does not follow. For though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.

  Austin Farrer

  Philosophical, May, Causes

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• Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification-that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly.

  John Galt

  Character, Men, Justice

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