Rational Quotes - Page 3

• Comparatively few people know what a million dollars actually is. To the majority it is a gaseous concept, swelling or decreasing as the occasion suggests. In the minds of politicians, perhaps more than anywhere, the notion of a million dollars has this accordion-like ability to expand or contract; if they are disposing of it, the million is a pleasing sum, reflecting warmly upon themselves; if somebody else wants it, it becomes a figure of inordinate size, not to be compassed by the rational mind.

  Robertson Davies

  Money, War, People

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• The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.

  William James

  Sorry, Apology, May

  William James (2012). “Psychology: The Briefer Course”, p.243, Courier Corporation

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• The oceans are the planet's last great living wilderness, man's only remaining frontier on earth, and perhaps his last chance to produce himself a rational species.

  John Culliney

  Ocean, Men, Rivers

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• The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Sleep, Animal, Insomnia

  "This column will change your life: Can't sleep, don't sleep" by Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. May 21, 2010.

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• If we had a better understanding of the ways we think about enemies, we might be able to think of more rational ways of settling conflict.

  Sam Keen

  Hero, Thinking, Understanding

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• This is why rational people - anti-religionists - must end their timidity and come out of their closet and assert themselves.

  Bill Maher

  People, Religion, Atheism

  "Religulous". www.imdb.com. 2008.

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• My religious superstition gave place to rational ideas based on scientific facts, and in proportion as I looked at everything from a new standpoint, I grew more happy day by day.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Religious, Ideas, Religion

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1898). “Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897”, p.44, UPNE

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• ...any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious.

  Julian Huxley

  Religious, Real, Inspiration

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• Man has but little heeded the advice of the wise men. He has been - fatefully, if not willingly - less virtuous, less constant, less rational, less peaceful than he knows how to be, than he is fully capable of being. He has been led astray from the ways of peace and brotherhood by his addiction to concepts and attitudes of narrow nationalism, racial and religious bigotry, greed and lust for power.

  Ralph Bunche

  Wise, Wisdom, Religious

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• When there are rational grounds for an opinion, people are content to set them forth and wait for them to operate. In such cases, people do not hold their opinions with passion; they hold them calmly, and set forth their reasons quietly. The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fear, Passion, People

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.3, Psychology Press

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• A first grader should understand that her or his culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society...Cultural relativity is defensible, attractive. It's a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Faith, Mean, Other Cultures

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• Opinions don't affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you're rational

  Ricky Gervais

  Atheism, Facts, Opinion

  Twitter post from Oct 4, 2012

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• This formidable censor of the public functionaries [the press], by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Mind, Public Opinion

  Thomas Jefferson, H. A. Washington (2011). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private”, p.324, Cambridge University Press

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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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• It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.

  Thomas Huxley

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  "Emancipation – Black and White". Essay by Thomas Henry Huxley, mathcs.clarku.edu. 1865.

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• Devotion has its own strange ways. It is not something rational, logical, something that can be explained to you. But it is something, if you go on growing from a student into a disciple, from a disciple into a devotee, and you come so close to the master that there is no distinction at all.

  Rajneesh

  Goes On, Growing, Way

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• Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Wikis give us a place where anyone who is kind, thoughtful and intelligent can come and join us in building a better and more rational world. Jimmy Wales Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

  George Sand

  Kindness, Regret, Thoughtful

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• All changes, even positive ones, are scary. Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of kaizen disarm the brain's fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.

  Robert D. Maurer

  Change, Mean, Play

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• I am arguing that faith as such, faith as an alleged method of acquiring knowledge, is totally invalid and as a consequence, all propositions of faith, because they lack rational demonstration, must conflict with reason.

  George H. Smith

  Religion, Atheism, Acquiring Knowledge

  George H. Smith (2010). “Atheism: The Case Against God”, p.120, Prometheus Books

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• Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.

  Bertrand Russell

  Leadership, Girl, Teacher

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Why Men Fight”, p.106, Routledge

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• A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.

  Walter Lippmann

  Real, Men, Balance

  Walter Lippmann (1955). “Essays in the Public Philosophy”, p.43, Transaction Publishers

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• Upon the whole, Chymistry is as yet but an opening science, closely connected with the usefull and ornamental arts, and worthy the attention of the liberal mind. And it must always become more and more so: for though it is only of late, that it has been looked upon in that light, the great progress already made in Chymical knowledge, gives us a pleasant prospect of rich additions to it. The Science is now studied on solid and rational grounds. While our knowledge is imperfect, it is apt to run into error: but Experiment is the thread that will lead us out of the labyrinth.

  Joseph Black

  Running, Art, Science

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• I decided that life rationally considered seemed pointless and futile, but it is still interesting in a variety of ways, including the study of science. So why not carry on, following the path of scientific hedonism? Besides, I did not have the courage for the more rational procedure of suicide.

  Robert S. Mulliken

  Suicide, Science, Interesting

  Robert S. Mulliken (2012). “Life of a Scientist: An Autobiographical Account of the Development of Molecular Orbital Theory”, p.24, Springer Science & Business Media

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• I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaître first proposed this [Big Bang] theory. ... There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. .... It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

  Hannes Alfven

  Time, Science, Years

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• Obsession is so extreme and so hard to imagine with the rational mind that it has a science-fiction-like quality to it-it's almost as if the obsessed one has been taken over by a replica, a pod, a facsimile of the rational person.

  Susan Cheever

  Taken, Mind, Quality

  Susan Cheever (2009). “Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction”, p.56, Simon and Schuster

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