Rational Quotes - Page 30

• Like the 'little emperors' of one-child China, too many Boomers were taught early that the world was made (or saved) for their comfort and enjoyment. They behaved accordingly, with a self-indulgence that was wholly rational, given their situation.

  Eric Liu

  Children, Self, Comfort

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• I am a socialist, a believer in rational thought and the rule of law.

  Ken Livingstone

  Law, Socialist, Believer

  "Ken Livingstone tells Jewish Chronicle of his contrition over leaked remarks" by Hélène Mulholland, www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2012.

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• I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.

  Hilary Mantel

  Writing, Linear, Novel

  "Hilary Mantel: 'If I'm suffering, I can make that pay'". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. October 17, 2012.

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• While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

  Karl Marx

  Philosophical, Mad, Gone

  Karl Marx (2007). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production”, p.171, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Mystery, Reason, Irrational

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• In a dream it's typical not to be rational.

  John Forbes Nash

  Dream, Typical

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• Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Voice, Relaxation

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• The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational way.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Daughter, Mother, Children

  "With a Conscience — ‘Our Mother’s Daughters’" by Claudia King, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 25, 2015.

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• Everything rational and sensible abandons me when I try to throw out photographs. Time and time again, I hold one over a wastebasket, and then find it impossible to release my fingers and let the picture drop and disappear.

  Susan Orlean

  Trying, Impossible, Photograph

  "Soulful" by Susan Orlean, www.newyorker.com. January 4, 2011.

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• The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Unconscious, Tacit

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• Making recess appointments when the Senate isn't in recess is neither rational nor moderate. It's a raw misuse of executive power by a president whose love of government is his most vulnerable spot with the electorate.

  John Podhoretz

  Government, President, Executive Power

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• Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth.

  Ayn Rand

  Western Culture, Needs, Code Of Ethics

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.413, Penguin

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• Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

  Salman Rushdie

  Book, Writing, Creation

  Salman Rushdie (1990). “In good faith”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others.

  George Santayana

  Suffering, Institutions, Positive Atheism

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.424, Indiana University Press

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• Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion.

  Marilyn vos Savant

  Literature, Able, Way

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• What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Men, Bears, Philosopher

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.118, Beacon Press

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• A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Desire, Proportion

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.39, Psychology Press

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• Yes, what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a machine-made article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it again.

  Hermann Hesse

  Men, Order, Mad

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• Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Suicide, Unique, Bipolar

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.11, Pan Macmillan

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• The pursuit of pleasure must be the goal of every rational person.

  Voltaire

  Goal, Pleasure, Pursuit

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• Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational ... architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.

  Roland Barthes

  Dream, Men, Expression

  Roland Barthes (1997). “The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies”, p.6, Univ of California Press

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• Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.

  Jane Austen

  Honesty, Heart, Female

  Jane Austen (2007). “The Complete Novels of Jane Austen”, p.302, Wordsworth Editions

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• "So, why do I have so much fear in my life?" "Because you don't believe. You don't know that we love you. The person who lives by his fears will not find freedom in my love. I am not talking about rational fears regarding legitimate dangers, but imagined fears, and especially the projection of those into the future. To the degree that those fears have a place in your life, you neither believe that I am good not know deep in your heart that I love you. You sing about it, you talk about it, but you don't know it."

  William P. Young

  Believe, Love You, Heart

  "The Shack". Book by William P. Young, May, 2007.

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• What I'm saying is that I'm trying to find rational reasons to explain irrational feelings, and that's neveer a good sign.

  Stephen King

  Feelings, Trying, Reason

  Stephen King, Michael Whelan (2004). “The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower”, p.237, Simon and Schuster

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• The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.

  Guy Debord

  Stories, Terrorism, States

  Guy Debord (1998). “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle”, p.24, Verso

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