Rationality Quotes - Page 12

• It is all about technique. The great mistake of this century is to put inspiration and creativity first.

  Vivienne Westwood

  Mistake, Inspiration, Creativity

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• I believe that intelligence and rationality will always be primary no matter what shape sentient creatures take. To not think that would be to doubt the value of life itself.

  Peter F. Hamilton

  Believe, Thinking, Doubt

  Peter F. Hamilton (2009). “Pandora's Star”, p.645, Pan Macmillan

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• Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance

  Albert Einstein

  Ignorance, Character, Height

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• This is everything to me. If I don't have this, I don't know what else I'll be doing. I personally have found where I belong. You can cut back to photos of me holding, uh, paper championships. That was truly my dream. This is what I was born to do. As far as walking away from all this to do something else, I don't..I just don't...I don't see the rationality.

  John Cena

  Dream, Cutting, Walking Away

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• "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" in a draft of the Declaration of Independence changes it instead into an assertion of rationality. The scientific mind of Franklin drew on the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of David Hume and Gottfried Leibniz. In what became known as "Hume's Fork" the latters' theory distinguished between synthetic truths that describe matters of fact, and analytic truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Self, Independence, Mind

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• Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency--the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Powerful, Rap, Exercise

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• Man is a mixture of desires that extend beyond his knowledge and often result in action conflicting with rationality.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Men, Desire, Mixtures

  Charles A. Lindbergh (1992). “Autobiography of Values”, Harcourt

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• New York, which is founded on forward motion and thus loath to acknowledge its dead, merely causes them to walk, endlessly unsatisfied and unburied, to invade the precincts of supposed progress, to lay chill hands on the heedless present, which does not know how to identify the forces that tug at its rationality.

  Luc Sante

  New York, Hands, Progress

  Luc Sante (2016). “Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York”, p.10, Macmillan

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• Hatred is a form of faith, distilled by passion to remove all rationality.

  L.E. Modesitt Jr.

  Passion, Hatred, Form

  L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (2010). “The Elysium Commission”, p.141, Macmillan

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• Ideology trumps rationality. Most conservatives cannot abide the solution to global warming - strong government regulations and a government-led effort to accelerate clean-energy technologies in the market.

  Joseph J. Romm

  Strong, Technology, Government

  Joseph J. Romm (2007). “Hell and high water: global warming - the solution and the politics - and what we should do”, William Morrow & Co

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• Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains.

  David Eagleman

  Emotional, Brain, Balance

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.95, Canongate Books

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• It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true

  Bertrand Russell

  Atheist, Philosophy, Believe

  Sceptical Essays (1928) "On the Value of Scepticism"

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• It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, "objectivity," "truth," it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Truth, Science, Men

  "Against Method". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1975.

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• The utilitarian behaves sensibly in all that is required for preservation but never takes account of the fact that he must die... His whole life is absorbed in avoiding death, which is inevitable, and therefore he might be thought to be the most irrational of men, if rationality has anything to do with understanding ends or comprehending the human situation as such.

  Allan Bloom

  Powerful, Passion, Men

  "The Closing of the American Mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students". Book by Allan Bloom, 1987.

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