Rational Quotes - Page 9

• Is management rational?

  Warren Buffett

  Investing, Management

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• Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. ... near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, Science, Experience

  Carl Sagan (1979). “Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science”, Random House Inc

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• The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention.

  Chris Hedges

  Atheist, Angel, Perfect

  Chris Hedges (2009). “When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• It seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mistery.

  Zoë Heller

  Atheist, Imagination, Mind

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• Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Mean, Men, Rights

  Alexander Hamilton (1842). “The Official and Other Papers of the Late Major-General Alexander Hamilton: Comp. Chiefly from the Originals in the Possession of Mrs. Hamilton ...”, p.76

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• These are no ordinary claims; and it seems hardly possible for a rational being to regard them with even a subdued interest; much less to treat them with mere indifference and contempt. If not true they are little else than the pretensions of a bold imposture, which not satisfied with having already enslaved millions of the human race, seeks to continue its encroachments upon human liberty, until all nations be subjected under its iron rule.

  Simon Greenleaf

  Iron, Race, Liberty

  Simon Greenleaf (1995). “The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence”, p.10, Kregel Publications

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• The will to believe chases out the rational mind, whenever and wherever the two come into conflict.

  Philip K. Dick

  Believe, Umpires, Two

  Philip K. Dick (2011). “The Transmigration of Timothy Archer”, p.103, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Human beings are born and begin their evolution through the great spiral of consciousness, moving from archaic to magic to mythic to rational to perhaps integral, and from there perhaps into genuinely transpersonal domains. But for every person that moves into integral or higher, dozens are born into the archaic.

  Ken Wilber

  Moving, Magic, Dozen

  Ken Wilber (2001). “A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality”, p.56, Shambhala Publications

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• If we suddenly plant our foot, and say, - I will neither eat nor drink nor wear nor touch any food or fabric which I do not know to be innocent, or deal with any person whose whole manner of life is not clear and rational, we shall stand still. Whose is so? Not mine; not thine; not his. But I think we must clear ourselves each one by the interrogation, whether we have earned our bread to-day by the hearty contribution of our energies to the common benefit? and we must not cease to tend to the correction of these flagrant wrongs, by laying one stone aright every day.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Thinking, Feet

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1170, Delphi Classics

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• I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.

  Robert McNamara

  War, Luck, Important

  "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". Documentary, August 30, 2003.

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• Oh, shame to men! devil with devil damn'd Firm concord holds, men only disagree Of creatures rational.

  John Milton

  Men, Devil, Shame

  John Milton (1853). “The Paradise lost”, p.79

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• To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Action, Life Is

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.961, Penguin

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• I just don't understand why the idea of the universe creating itself is a rational one

  Dennis Prager

  Ideas, Creating, Universe

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• Light and the rational forms are locked in combat; light sets them into motion, bends what is straight, makes parallels oval, inscribes circles in the intervals, makes the intervals active.

  Paul Klee

  Light, Circles, Oval

  Paul Klee (2012). “Paul Klee”, p.98, Parkstone International

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• A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Emotion, Source

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.301, Penguin

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• Humans alone are created as rational beings in the image of God, capable of a relationship with God and given by him the capacity to understand the universe in which they live.

  John Lennox

  Capacity, Given, Relationship With God

  John Lennox (2011). “Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target”, p.28, Lion Books

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• Today, architecture is invention. It isn't enough to just be rational - It must also be beautiful.

  Oscar Niemeyer

  Beautiful, Today, Architecture

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• A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.

  Boethius

  Individuality, Substance, Persons

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• For centuries, we in the West have thought of ourselves as rational animals whose mental capacities transcend our bodily nature. In this traditional view our minds are abstract, logical, unemotionally rational, consciously accessible, and, above all, able to directly fit and represent the world. Language has a special place in thie view of what a human is - it is a privileged, logical symbol system internal to our minds that transparently expresses abstract concepts that are defined in terms of the external world itself.

  George Lakoff

  Animal, Views, Mind

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• Near the end of the 1700s, philosophers began to declare that humans were rational individuals. People were flattered by being recognized as individuals, and by being called rational, and the idea soon wormed its way into the belief systems of nearly everyone in the upper class. Despite resistance from Church and State, the idea of rational individuality replaced the assumption that truth comes only from god and king.

  Alex Pentland

  Kings, Class, Ideas

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• Don't neglect your critical faculties. Remember that God is a rational God, who has made us in His own image. God invites and expects us to explore His double revelation, in nature and Scripture, with the minds He has given us, and to go on in the development of a Christian mind to apply His marvellous revealed truth to every aspect of the modern and post-modern world.

  John Stott

  Christian, Mind, Development

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• I am not well qualified to criticize the theory of rational expectations and the efficient market hypothesis because as a market participant I considered them so unrealistic that I never bothered to study them.

  George Soros

  Expectations, Study, Theory

  George Soros' Remarks at the Festival of Economics, www.georgesoros.com. June 2, 2012.

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• To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.

  Epictetus

  Unendurable, Irrational

  Epictetus (1926). “Discourses”

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• Modern science and technology can relieve men of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labor. They may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.

  Noam Chomsky

  Technology, Men, Order

  Noam Chomsky (2003). “For Reasons Of State”, p.404, Penguin Books India

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• Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Rights

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.314, Penguin

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