Rational Quotes - Page 15

• In the humanist ideal, the mainstream is where interesting debate, the generating of new ideas and creativity take place. In rational society this mainstream is considered uncontrollable and is therefore made marginal. The centre ground is occupied instead by structures and courtiers.

  John Ralston Saul

  Creativity, Ideas, Interesting

  "The Doubter's Companion". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1994.

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• It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational élites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.

  John Ralston Saul

  Reality, Differences, Opinion

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.249, Simon and Schuster

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• No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.

  John L. Lewis

  Play, Political, Hats

  1937 Address, 3 Sep. Recalled on his death 11 Jun 1969.

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• Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldridge Cleaver is worth ten minutes of Roy Wilkins. The labor crises settled at the negotiating table is nothing compared to the confrontation that results in a strike ... normality has become the nemesis of network news.

  Spiro T. Agnew

  News, Tables, Controversial

  John R. Coyne, Spiro T. Agnew (1972). “The Impudent Snobs: Agnew Vs. the Intellectual Establishment”, New Rochelle, N.Y. : Arlington House

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• It is the fertile hallucination that makes paint so compelling. Paint is like the numerologist's numbers, always counting but never adding up, always speaking but never saying anything rational, always playing at being abstract but never leaving the clotted body.

  James Elkins

  Play, Numbers, Leaving

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.49, Routledge

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• Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.

  Cass Sunstein

  Extremist Groups, Light, Government

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• You would consider me an atheist or agnostic. I find religion and spirituality fascinating. I would like to believe this isn’t the end and there’s something more, but I can’t convince the rational part of me that that makes any sense whatsoever.

  George R. R. Martin

  Atheist, Believe, Spirituality

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• I am a believer in Adam Smith, who says that if you look at something that really contributes value to society, and you can deliver it at a reasonable price, then society will recognise that at some point because rational behaviour will come into play.

  David Cheriton

  Play, Looks, Behaviour

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• These are not free men in any rational and exact sense of the word.

  Ralph Adams Cram

  Men, Free Man

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• [T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously-after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Athlete, Thinking, Media

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• A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.

  Walter Lippmann

  Order, Law, Common

  Walter Lippmann (1955). “Essays in the Public Philosophy”, p.106, Transaction Publishers

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• I've always wanted to make the world a more rational place. I'm still working on it.

  Penn Jillette

  World, Wanted, Stills

  Interview with Ken Plume, asitecalledfred.com. September 2003.

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• To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science. Great achievement is assured, however, of subsequent recognition and grateful acceptance by public opinion, which in due course will make it one of its own prejudices

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Grateful, Independent, Acceptance

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1945). “Hegel's Philosophy of right”

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• Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie , concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Optimism, Survival

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.725, Open Road Media

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• Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.

  Alvin Toffler

  Future, Men, Data

  ALVIN TOFFLER (1970). “FUTURE SHOCK”

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• The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.

  Richard Dawkins

  Faith, Religious, Liberty

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because, if you can do that, you can do anything.

  Richard Linklater

  Dream, Waking, Infinite

  "Fictional character: Guy Forsyth". "Waking Life", www.imdb.com. 2001.

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• To stand well in the estimation of one's country is a happiness that no rational creature can be insensible of.

  George Washington

  Country, Wells, Creatures

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1834). “Writings: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts”, p.310

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• There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

  Ayn Rand

  Truth, Integrity, Knowledge

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.101, Penguin

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• American literature has been, and is, singularly deficient in established critics who have anything like a rational conception of their jobs. The majority, initiate in a few of the patent rituals of Aristotle and Quintilian, don the forbidding robes of high priests to Sweetness and Light, and go about their business much as if the idea were to keep all they know to themselves.

  Burton Rascoe

  Jobs, Light, Ideas

  "Fanfare" by Burton Rascoe in "H. L. Mencken", 1920.

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• I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and -- and rational argument.

  Barack Obama

  Thinking, People, Argument

  "Obama takes questions on economy". Barack Obama's comments during his first prime time televised news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, www.cnn.com. February 9, 2009.

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• No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong -- only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again.

  Plato

  Past, Men, Evil

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• So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational. A free discipline controls the individual by appealing to his reason and conscience, and therefore to his self-respect; while an unfree control works upon some lower phase of the mind, and so tends to degrade him. It is freedom to be disciplined in as rational a manner as you are fit for.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Mean, Self, Discipline

  Charles Horton Cooley (2017). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.370, Routledge

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• All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as "revealed religion". They are theories more or less rational which uncivilised men have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilised men believe that they believe.

  William Winwood Reade

  Believe, Destiny, Men

  William Winwood Reade (1874). “The Martyrdom of Man”, p.179

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• I am not anti-rational, just unrational. You may infer a rational meaning in what I say or do, but it is your doing, not mine.

  U.G. Krishnamurti

  May, Mines

  "No Way Out: Conversations With U.G. Krishnamurti". Book edited by J.S.R.L. Narayana Moorty and Anthony Paul Frank Naronha (Chapter 1: The Unrational Philosophy of U.G. Krishnamurti), 2002.

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