#Rationality Quotes

“The need for a rational consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”

“Well, one time some attractive woman sat next to Charlie and asked him what he owed his success to, and, unfortunately, she insisted on a one word answer. He had a speech prepared that would have gone on for several hours. But when forced to boil it down to one word, he said that was "rational". You know, he comes equipped for rationality, and he applies it in business. He doesn't always apply it elsewhere, but he applies it in business and that has made him a huge business success.”

“Would your reply possibly be this? Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you're saying we're going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent. Only in Grover Norquist's imagination does such a response exist.”

“It is easier to rationalize than it is to be rational.”

“Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.”

“It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. In the stock market you don't base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.”

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

“Failure comes from ego, greed, envy, fear, imitation. I have success not because I am smart, but because I am rational.”

“Is management rational?”

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”

“Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.”

“The restraining grace of common sense is the mark of all valid minds.”

“I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

“Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

“Rationality is not one of this industry's attributes.”

“There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.”

“To a rational being it is the same thing to act according to nature and according to reason.”

“There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.”

“If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment.”

“All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.”

“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.”

“Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme which we cannot escape.”

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”

“That the world is not the embodiment of an eternal rationality can be conclusively proved by the fact that the piece of the worldthat we know--I mean our human reason--is not so very rational. And if it is not eternally and completely wise and rational, then the rest of the world will not be either; here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum applies, and does so with decisive force.”

“We never desire strongly, what we desire rationally.”

“In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.”

“There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic.”

“A man for whom accident discovers sense, is not a rational being. A man only is so who understands, who distinguishes, who tests it.”

“If the mind is dominated by hatred, the best part of the brain, which is used to judge right and wrong, does not function properly.”

“A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.”

“Logic is one thing and commonsense another.”

“Logic: an instrument used for bolstering a prejudice.”

“Anger may bring extra energy, but it eclipses the best part of our brain: its rationality. The energy of anger is almost always unreliable.”

“We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.”

“There are all too many who, on account of their notorious ineptitude, thrive better in a rationalist system than in freedom. Freedom is one of those difficult things.”

“Our mania for rational explanations obviously has its roots in our fear of metaphysics, for the two were always hostile brothers. Hence, anything unexpected that approaches us from the dark realm is regarded either as coming from outside and, therefore, as real, or else as a hallucination and, therefore, not true. The idea that anything could be real or true which does not come from outside has hardly begun to dawn on contemporary man.”

“The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits of rationality.”

“To go out of your mind once a day is tremendously important, because by going out of your mind you come to your senses. And if you stay in your mind all of the time, you are over rational, in other words you are like a very rigid bridge which because it has no give; no craziness in it, is going to be blown down by the first hurricane.”

“I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.”