Rational Quotes - Page 18

• I advance no exaggerated or fanciful claim for Vegetarianism. It is not, as some have asserted, a "panacea" for human ills; it is something much more rational - an essential part of the modern humanitarian movement, which can make no true progress without it. Vegetarianism is the diet of the future, as flesh-food is the diet of the past.

  Henry Stephens Salt

  Past, Vegetarianism, Progress

  "The Humanities of Diet". Book by Henry Stephens Salt, 1897.

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• I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Death, Self, Long

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• Remember, that when I speak of pleasures I always mean the elegant pleasures of a rational being, and not the brutal ones of a swine. I mean la bonne chère, short of gluttony; wine, infinitely short of drunkenness; play, without the least gaming; and gallantry, without debauchery.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Wine, Mean, Play

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• I can hardly bring myself to caution you against drinking, because I am persuaded that I am writing to a rational creature, a gentleman, and not to a swine. However, that you may not be insensibly drawn into that beastly custom of even sober drinking and sipping, as the sots call it, I advise you to be of no club whatsoever.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Drinking, Writing, Gentleman

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.416, OUP Oxford

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• They are men and women who tend to believe that the human being is perfectible and social progress predictable, and that the instrument for effecting the two is reason; that truths are transitory and empirically determined; that equality is desirable and attainable through the action of state power; that social and individual differences, if they are not rational, are objectionable, and should be scientifically eliminated; that all people and societies strive to organize themselves upon a rationalist and scientific paradigm.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Believe, Men, Individual Differences

  "The Obliging Order: William F. Buckley’s War on Totalitarianism and Blandness" by Thomas F. Bertonneau, www.firstprinciplesjournal.com. Fall 2008.

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• What do you think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around and see how many are in absolute need of that which you do not need? Can you not take the hint?

  J. G. Holland

  Thinking, Needs, Looks

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 27, 1895.

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• The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, or to dispute, forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from self-opinion.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Spring, Simple, Men

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.511, 谷月社

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• One rational voice is dumb: over a grave
  The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved.
  Sad is Eros, builder of cities,
  And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

  W. H. Auden

  Death, Cities, Voice

  "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" l. 109 (1939)

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• It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. In the stock market you don't base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.

  Warren Buffett

  Loss, Exercise, Thinking

  "The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy". Book by Robert G. Hagstrom (p. 112), 2000.

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• Better a superstitious believer than a rational unbeliever.

  Nachman of Breslov

  Believer, Superstitious, Unbelievers

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• While the apostles of the new so-called "behavioral" theory present ample evidence of how often human beings make irrational financial decisions, it remains to be seen whether these decisions lead to predictable errors that create systematic mispricings upon which rational investors can readily and economically capitalize.

  John C. Bogle

  Errors, Decision, Investing

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• A rational prediction has an explanation based on theory.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Management, Predictions, Theory

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• Well, one time some attractive woman sat next to Charlie and asked him what he owed his success to, and, unfortunately, she insisted on a one word answer. He had a speech prepared that would have gone on for several hours. But when forced to boil it down to one word, he said that was "rational". You know, he comes equipped for rationality, and he applies it in business. He doesn't always apply it elsewhere, but he applies it in business and that has made him a huge business success.

  Warren Buffett

  Business Success, Next, Gone

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• While we somehow understand revenge on an intuitive level between individuals, I do suspect that companies, assuming that people are rational, completely miss and underestimate the motivation people have for revenge.

  Dan Ariely

  Motivation, Revenge, People

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• Gossip, public, private, social - to fight against it either by word or pen seems, after all, like fighting with shadows. Everybody laughs at it, protests against it, blames and despises it; yet everybody does it, or at least encourages others in it: quite innocently, unconsciously, in such a small, harmless fashion - yet we do it. We must talk about something, and it is not all of us who can find a rational topic of conversation, or discuss it when found.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Fashion, Fighting, Laughing

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 8), 1858.

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• Lightning is like an elementary spirit, eccentric or rational, clever or silly, passing from one extreme to the other.

  Camille Flammarion

  Clever, Silly, Lightning

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• Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of.

  Richard Whately

  Men, Divine Wisdom, Interesting

  Richard Whately (1855). “Introductory lectures on political-economy, delivered at Oxford, in Easter term MDCCCXXXI. With remarks on tithes and on poor-laws and on penal colonies”, p.64

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• Rational discourse is only one way of presenting and examining an issue and by no means the best. Our new intellectuals are not aware of its limitations and of the nature of the things outside.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Mean, Issues, Way

  "Science in a Free Society". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1978.

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• There is no "scientific worldview" just as there is no uniform enterprise "science" - except in the minds of metaphysicians, school masters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche... There is no objective principle that could direct us away from the supermarket "religion" or the supermarket "art" toward the more modern, and much more expensive supermarket "science." Besides, the search for such guidance would be in conflict with the idea of individual responsibility which allegedly is an important ingredient of a "rational" or scientific age.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Art, Responsibility, School

  "Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Richness". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1999.

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• The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Real, Joy, Solitude

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• It is no more rational to have lawyers in positions of power than it would be to have garbage collectors in positions of power. And in human terms garbage collectors would be preferable.

  Robert Payne

  Position Of Power, Would Be, Garbage

  Robert Payne (1975). “The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America”, Praeger Publishers

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• If the transmigration of a soul takes place into a rational being, it simply becomes the soul of that body. But if the soul migrates into a brute beast, it follows the body outside, as a guardian spirit follows a man. For there could never be a rational soul in an irrational being.

  Sallust

  Men, Soul, Body

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• We are rational creatures: Our virtue and perfection is to love reason, or rather to love order.

  Nicolas Malebranche

  Order, Perfection, Virtue

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• Serious rational criticism is so rare that it should be encouraged. Being too ready to defend oneself is more dangerous than being too ready to admit a mistake.

  Karl Popper

  Mistake, Criticism, Serious

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• I really don't have a problem with gay marriage... because I'm tolerant and rational.

  David Cross

  Funny, Humor, Gay

  "Last Laugh '05". TV Movie, December 11, 2005.

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