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Irrationality Quotes

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Irrationality Quotes

“The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced.”

WaySecretModernMoralityAnxietyIdealsRootsCurrentsTerrorNobleRussiaCommunismConsistentSovietDreadDisguiseAltruismLiteralEmbodimentIrrationalitySoviet Russia
Book:Philosophy: Who Needs It
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“The Bobbit case, which brought to life the ancient mythic archetype of woman as castrator, demonstrated that women are as aggressive as men and that sex is a dark, dangerous force of nature. But of course the feminist establishment, stuck in its battered-woman blinders, learned nothing as usual from this lurid refutation of its normal views. Classic art works like Bizet's Carmen tell us more about the irrationality of love, jealousy and revenge than do all the pat formulas of the counseling industry.”

MenArtCoursesForceSexDarkViewsCasesDangerousIndustryNormalAncientFeministRevengeStuckClassicFormulasAggressiveUsualEstablishmentCounselingArchetypeForces Of NatureIrrationalityBatteredBlindersRefutationLove JealousyBattered WomenBizet
Author:Camille Paglia
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“In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed. In this world irrationality clings to man like his shadow so that the right things get done for the wrong reasons - afterwards, we dredge up the right reasons for justification. It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where "reconciliation" means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it.”

MenWorldMeanReasonDoneLawSpeakSidesCommonMoralEnemyPrinciplesWrittenThis WorldAngelShadowBasesAimGreedRight ThingJustificationAngleImmoralReconciliationLoftyCommon GoodIrrationalityMoral PrinciplesWrong ReasonsRules For Radicals
Author:Saul Alinsky
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“Our world is integrated to an unprecedented degree, while the global political awakening is injecting into interstate relations an intense amount of tension, emotion, even irrationality, which could cumulatively produce circumstances that preclude an effective and genuinely shared universal response to new global problems.”

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Author:Zbigniew Brzezinski
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“In fact, violence as a symbol of our growing irrationality has had an increasing role in activity for its own sake, when no possible justification could be made that the activity was seeking to resolve a problem.”

MadeFactsProblemRolesGrowingViolenceActivitySakeSeekingSymbolsResolveJustificationIrrationality
Book:The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis
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“Whereas Absurdism in Europe seemed a logical, almost inevitable response to the irrationality of war, the analogous elements that surfaced in American drama seemed more a response to a materialist society run amok. The American-style Absurdism seemed to spring full-blown out of television advertisements and situation comedies, which had become new myth-making machines.”

WarRunningSituationComedyStyleTelevisionDramaElementsSpringEuropeMachinesResponseMythInevitableLogicalAdvertisementsIrrationality
Author:Arnold Aronson
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“There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous--secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will--we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books . . . we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.”

KnowsFirstsLittlesBookOpinionCasesSunBearsCriticismIllBritishNecksSubmitDisgustingGrossYokeDegradingIrrationalityEmanateIll WillFatherlandUnbiased
Book:Complete Works Of Edgar Allan Poe: The New Raven Edition
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“At no time have I ever said that people should be stripped of their right to the insanity of belief in God. If they want to practice this kind of irrationality, that's their business. It won't get them anywhere; it certainly won't make them happier or more compassionate human beings; but if they want to chew that particular cud. they're welcome to it.”

PeopleIfsWantShouldHumansKindSaidBeliefHuman BeingsPracticeAtheismParticularWelcomeInsanityCompassionateBelief In GodIrrationality
Author:Madalyn Murray O'Hair
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“What a mathematical proof actually does is show that certain conclusions, such as the irrationality of , follow from certain premises, such as the principle of mathematical induction. The validity of these premises is an entirely independent matter which can safely be left to philosophers.”

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Book:Mathematics
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“In our most Puritan of society, gambling-like other pleasures-is either taxed, restricted to certain hours, or forbidden altogether. Yet the impulse to gamble remains an eternal aspect of the irrationality of man. It finds outlets in business, war, politics, in the formal overtures of the gambling casinos, and in the less ceremonious exchanges among individuals of differing opinions.”

MenWarCertainIndividualHoursPleasureOpinionEternalAspectRemainsImpulseGamblingFormalForbiddenOutletsGamblePuritanCasinosIrrationality
Author:Richard Arnold Epstein
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“Appeasers will always try to get the least dangerous person to bend to the most dangerous person. This is one of the main problems in dysfunctional relationships. The more mature and rational you are the more you are victimized because, they are aware that you're not going to be as aggressive, destructive, or possibly as abusive and so you are the one who has to bend. You're the one who has to change and this constant rapping of rational people's souls around the prickly irrationalities of other people are what appeasers are constantly doing.”

PeopleTryingPersonsSoulProblemDangerousConstantRapRationalDestructiveMatureAggressiveAbusiveIrrationalityDysfunctional Relationship
Author:Stefan Molyneux
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“The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.”

PeopleMenCharacterTurnsCultureEvilWinningLeaderFailingWorstMankindIntellectualAverageMinoritiesCowardTrendsInvitesDominantBrutesThugAverage ManIrrationalityEvil ManAbdication
Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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“A letter is paradoxically the most revealing and the most deceptive of confessional revelations. We all have our inconsistencies, prejudices, irrationalities which, although strongly felt at the time, may be transitory. A letter captures the mood of the moment. The transitory becomes immutably fixed, part of the evidence for the prosecution or the defence.”

MayMomentsFeltEvidenceLettersPrejudiceMoodFixedRevelationsCaptureRevealingDefenceDeceptiveTransitoryInconsistencyIrrationalityProsecution
Book:Time to Be in Earnest
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“God is great"). Conversations about the practical impossibility of God's existence and the science-based irrationality of an afterlife slid seamlessly into xenophobia over Muslim immigration or the practice of veiling. The New Atheists became the new Islamophobes, their invectives against Muslims resembling the rowdy, uneducated ramblings of backwoods racists rather than appraisals based on intellect, rationality and reason. "Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.”

HumansReasonHuman BeingsExistencePracticeConversationIslamAtheistIntellectPracticalsImmigrationRacistAfterlifeCultRationalityImpossibilityXenophobiaUneducatedIrrationalityAppraisalRamblingGod Is GreatRowdyBackwoods
Author:Sam Harris
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“Wherever there is a religious regime, over there there is ignorance, misery and absurdity! No religious state can ever elevate its own people! Sooner or later, the primitiveness of the religious administrations and the irrationality of the religious rules will cause a great collapse of those countries! The downfall is inevitable!”

PeopleCountryStatesCausesReligiousIgnoranceMiseryAdministrationInevitableRegimesCollapseSooner Or LaterAbsurdityDownfallIrrationality
Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan
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“But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such times, when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the truth of the Christian religion; and well they may, for it is too fanciful and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability and irrationality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can be proved.”

ThinkingMenWellsMayReasonChristianDoubtSeriousThoughtfulArticlesCreedsConsolationRevoltInconsistencyIrrationalityConjectureImprobability
Book:The Works of Thomas Paine: A Hero in the American Revolution. With an Account of His Life ...
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“It has taken me a long time to realize where I most disagree with Marx. His assessment of capitalism is far too favorable. He took its instability, inhumanity and irrationality to be signs that it was a merely transitional form, which had delivered into humanity's hands the means to a much better way of life than any that have ever existed on earth. Marx could not bring himself to believe that our species is so benighted, irrational and slavish that it would put up with such a monstrous way of life.”

WayBelieveMeanLongHandsEarthFormHumanityRealizingTakenLong TimeCapitalismSpeciesDisagreeIrrationalBetter WaysMonstrousAssessmentInstabilityInhumanityIrrationality
Author:Allen W. Wood
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“My conjecture is that most people will refuse to let go, even when their lives have become boring (at least in comparisons with possible lives lived by new generations). If this happens, there will eventually be no room for new generations. A kind of collective irrationality will lead to a bleak life for the last generation that decides to stay around. Unless we put and end to the human race (through global warming, for example), before this happens, individual egoism will block the path to a better world.”

PeopleIfsWorldHumansKindEndsHappensLastsIndividualRoomsRacePathGenerationsExampleLetting GoRefuseBoringBlockHuman RaceGlobal WarmingCollectivesComparisonEgoismNew GenerationBleakIrrationalityConjecture
Author:Torbjorn Tannsjo
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“My clinical psychologist wife of 40 years has always had a close intellectual influence on me. When I was beginning to talk openly in the economics profession about irrationality in decision-making, I received a lot of criticism. Ginny would support my views and remind me that a whole other profession - psychology - studies people's irrational sides.”

PeopleYearsWholeSidesDecisionViewsSupportStudyPsychologyWifeInfluenceIntellectualEconomicsCriticismProfessionDecision MakingIrrationalPsychologistIrrationalityClinicalsClinical Psychologists
Author:Robert J. Shiller
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“I've always felt that the writing I responded to most - the novels and stories that compelled me, that felt like they described the world I live in, with all of its subjectivity, irrationality, and paradox, were those which made free use of myths and symbols, fantastic occurences, florid metaphors, linguistic experiments, etcetera - to depict the experiences of relatively 'realistic' characters - on the level of their emotions and psychology, rather than in terms of what kinds of lives they led or what kind of events they experience.”

WorldWritingKindCharacterTermEmotionNovelPsychologyMetaphorMythFantasticParadoxIrrationality
Author:Jonathan Lethem
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“In order to teach a course in the history of Western religious thought, I had to do a great deal of research in the writings within the Judaic and Christian traditions and I was astonished to find in those writings philosophical thought of great power and sophistication. These writings completely blew away all my opinions about what I had taken to be the irrationality or immaturity of religious ideas, opinions which were and still are fashionable in many intellectual and literary circles today.”

WritingTodayChristianReligiousOpinionTeachTakenIntellectualTraditionPhilosophicalWesternFashionableGreat PowerSophisticationImmaturityIrrationality
Author:Jacob Needleman
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