Rational Quotes - Page 33

• If you want to feel good, be rational.

  Ayn Rand

  Humor, Feel Good, Deep Thought

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• I have heard about the civilized,
  the marriages run on
  talk, elegant and
  honest, rational.
  But and I are savages.

  Sharon Olds

  I Love You, Running, Savages

  Sharon Olds, “Primitive”

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• The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.

  Erich Fromm

  Life, Love Is, Important

  "The Art of Loving". Book by Erich Fromm, 1956.

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• We are grossly wasting our energy resources and other precious raw materials as though their supply were infinite. We must even face the prospect of changing our basic ways of living. This change will either be made on our own initiative in a planned and rational way, or forced on us with chaos and suffering by the inexorable laws of nature.

  Jimmy Carter

  Nature, Animal, Law

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• Seas of blood have been shed for the sake of patriotism. One would expect the harm and irrationality of patriotism to be self-evident to everyone. But the surprising fact is that cultured and learned people not only do not notice the harm and stupidity of patriotism, they resist every unveiling of it with the greatest obstinacy and passion (with no rational grounds), and continue to praise it as beneficent and elevating.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Passion, Self, Blood

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• All social life is essentially practical. All mysterious which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of the practice.

  Karl Marx

  Peace, Ubuntu, Practice

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• I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war... But we have no more urgent task.

  John F. Kennedy

  Peace, War, Men

  American University Commencement Address, delivered 10 June 1963

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• I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Humility, Exercise, Power

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.416, Penguin

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• Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Respect, Real, Responsibility

  "Philosophy of Civilisation". Book by Albert Schweitzer (1923), translated by C. T. Campion, 1949.

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• Rational argument can be defeated by refusing to argue rationally.

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, Arguing, Argument

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• Beware of being too rational. In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn't become king. He gets lynched.

  Aldous Huxley

  Country, Kings, Truth

  Aldous Huxley (2009). “Island”, p.72, Random House

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• All the dancer's gestures are signs of things, and the dance called rational, because it aptly signifies and displays something over and above the pleasure of the senses.

  Saint Augustine

  Dance, Dancing, Gestures

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• Dancing is at once rational & healthful: it gives animal spirits; it is the natural amusement of young people, & such it has been from the days of Moses.

  William Cobbett

  Dance, Animal, People

  William Cobbett (2006). “Advice to Young Men”, p.33, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Yoga is a science, and not a vague dreamy drifting or imagining. It is an applied science, a systematized collection of laws applied to bring about a definite end. It takes up the laws of psychology, applicable to the unfolding of the whole consciousness of man on every plane, in every world, and applies those rationally in a particular case. This rational application of the laws of unfolding consciousness acts exactly on the same principles that you see applied around you every day in other departments of science.

  Annie Besant

  Success, Yoga, Men

  Annie Besant (2017). “The Nature and Practice of Yoga”, BookRix

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• Regardless of the method, the act of worship must be in spirit and truth-from our rational consciousness and consistent with the rest of our lives (see John 4:24). We don't have to be great singers or musicians to worship God. But we do need to be in a personal relationship with Him and live with the truth of His greatness reflecting through all we are becoming and all we do.

  Darlene Zschech

  Greatness, Musician, Needs

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• What else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I would do the nightingale's part; if I were a swan, I would do as a swan. But now I am a rational creature, and I ought to praise God. This is my work. I do it, nor will I desert my post, so long as I am allowed to keep it. And I ask you to join me in this same song.

  Epictetus

  Song, Men, Swans

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• The void in our society has been produced by the absence of values... we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.

  John Ralston Saul

  Vision, Our Society, Way

  John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.584, Simon and Schuster

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• Reality and truth are not products of rational or linear thinking. They are derived from absolute wisdom as it manifests itself spontaneously, coming from the light of the Spirit.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

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• For you deal here above all with human life, and human life is sacred; no one may dare make an attempt upon it. Respect for life, even with regard to the great problem of the birth rate, must find here in your Assembly its highest affirmation and its most rational defense. Your task is to ensure that there is enough bread on the tables of mankind, and not to encourage an artificial control of births, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.

  Pope Paul VI

  Numbers, Order, Birth Rate

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• The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, War, Teaching

  "Why I Am Not a Christian".

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• The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Airplane, Science, Discovery

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• Ignorance is in relationship to content; it is not just a spirit of ignorance. In verse 21 it speaks of "the truth in Jesus." Truth is content, truth has something to do with reason. Truth has something to do with the rational creature that God has made us. The dilemma here in the internal world is not just some sort of grey fog, it is in relationship to content.

  Francis Schaeffer

  God, Jesus, Ignorance

  Francis Schaeffer (2012). “True Spirituality”, p.97, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• ..the self-knowledge that I am talking about is concrete, verifiable and is tangible like science itself and completely understandable in rational terms.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Yoga, Self, Talking

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• In fact, at this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the 'edge of history.' There would be a real New Age.

  Ken Wilber

  Real, Self Esteem, Ego

  Ken Wilber (2004). “The Simple Feeling of Being: Visionary, Spiritual, and Poetic Writings”, p.143, Shambhala Publications

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• What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Humility, Reflection, Order

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