Rational Quotes - Page 16

• China should be developing through the various foreign investments it receives. I hope for its level-headed and rational understanding that anything to discourage that is a disservice to itself.

  Yoshihiko Noda

  Understanding, Levels, Investment

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• The Founding Fathers worried that some common impulse of passion might lead many to subvert the rights of the few. It's a rational fear, one that is played out endlessly.

  David Harsanyi

  Father, Passion, Rights

  "Right blogs on guns: 'We win'" by Kevin Cirilli, www.politico.com. April 18, 2013.

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• Knowing where things are, and why, is essential to rational decision making

  Jack Dangermond

  Knowing, Decision, Essentials

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• No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.

  Carlo M. Cipolla

  Stupid, Intelligent, People

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• If a severe pandemic materializes, all of society could pay a heavy price for decades of failing to create a rational system of health care that works for all of us.

  Irwin Redlener

  Pandemics, Care, Pay

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• Wherefore, as I have said to you, I, God, have become man, and man has become God by the union of My Divine Nature with your human nature. This greatness is given in general to all rational creatures, but, among these I have especially chosen My ministers for the sake of your salvation, so that, through them, the Blood of the humble and immaculate Lamb, My only-begotten Son, may be administered to you.

  St. Catherine of Siena

  Humble, Son, Greatness

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• There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Rights, May, Chance

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• The argument from design is ultimately an appeal to miraculous causes, i.e., causes that do not, and cannot, occur in the natural course of events. This is why an explanation via design is not a legitimate alternative to scientific and other naturalistic modes of explanation. To refer to a miraculous cause is to refer to something that is inherently unknowable, and this sanctuary of ignorance explains nothing at all. However much it may soothe the imagination of the ignorant, it does nothing to satisfy the understanding of a rational person.

  George H. Smith

  Ignorance, Imagination, Design

  George H. Smith (2000). “Why Atheism?”, Pyr Books

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• It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Atheism, Citizens, Tests

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 7: 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814”, p.304, Princeton University Press

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• There is no substantive, rational defense; I mean, the other side doesn't have a case.

  Fred Phelps

  Mean, Scary, Defense

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• When I was a kid, I thought that if everyone looked up the way I did then everyone would want to study the universe just like me - how could they not? This naiveté is what tells me that my interest was more a calling than a rational comparative assessment about what to be when I grew up.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Kids, Assessment, Calling

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• There is no justice, there is no rational structure to it [life]. That is just the way it is, and each person figures out some way to cope.

  Woody Allen

  Justice, Way, Structure

  "Woody Allen's World: Whatever Works". Interview with Robert E. Lauder, www.commonwealmagazine.org. April 15, 2010.

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• The mind is the enemy of intuition, according to many New Age adherents, but I don't buy that. I look at everything in terms of polarities - two ends of the same continuum. Young/old, male/female, individuality/conformity, work/play, freedom/constraint, right/left, day/night, life/death, rational/emotional, and so on.

  Shakti Gawain

  Night, Emotional, Play

  "Shakti Gawain Is Still ‘Living in the Light’". Interview with BJ Gallagher, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 5, 2012.

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• Horror is one of the few genres - romance and comedy are the other two that come to mind - that's all emotion-driven. It's not a rational genre, like science fiction is. It's irrational by nature. And it is capable of exploring all aspects of human experience.

  Stephen R. Bissette

  Two, Romance, Mind

  Interview with Chris Dahlen, www.avclub.com. July 23, 2009.

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• That the world is not the embodiment of an eternal rationality can be conclusively proved by the fact that the piece of the worldthat we know--I mean our human reason--is not so very rational. And if it is not eternally and completely wise and rational, then the rest of the world will not be either; here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum applies, and does so with decisive force.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Wise, Mean, Doe

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• ... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.

  Frances Wright

  Happiness, Government, People

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.122

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• Since philosophy is the exploration of the rational, it is for that very reason the apprehension of the present and the actual, not the erection of a beyond, supposed to exist, God knows where, or rather which exists, and we can perfectly well say where, namely in the error of a one-sided, empty, ratiocination.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Reality

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1958). “Philosophy of right”

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• What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. On this conviction the plain man like the philosopher takes his stand,and from it philosophy starts in its study of the universe of mind as well as the universe of nature.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Reality

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1958). “Philosophy of right”

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• ... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.

  Robert Musil

  Life, World, Emotion

  Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.88, University of Chicago Press

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• The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Running, Truth, Honesty

  Sydney J. Harris (1986). “Clearing the ground”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• [I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Honesty, Government, House

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• ... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, "immortal longings.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Crazy, Humanity, Taste

  Elizabeth Bowen (1959). “Stories”

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• Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.

  Bertrand Russell

  Clever, Animal, Men

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• After I went to bed I had a curious fancy as to dreams. In sleep the doors of the mind are shut, and thoughts come jumping in at the windows. They tumble headlong, and therefore are so disorderly and strange. Sometimes they are stout and light on their feet, and then they are rational dreams.

  James Boswell

  Dream, Sleep, Thoughtful

  James Boswell (2001). “Boswell's Edinburgh Journals 1767-1786”, Mercat Press Books

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• The man of regular life and rational mind never despairs.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Men, Worry, Mind

  Charlotte Bronte (2009). “The Professor: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition”, p.88, ReadHowYouWant.com

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