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Rational Quotes

Browse 1559 quotes about Rational.

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Rational Quotes

“Stressful conditions tax our cognitive bandwidth, reducing our ability to think clearly and exercise executive control. Stress also hurts our ability to make rational long-term decisions that require delayed gratification. Living in a community in which we feel a sense of trust and support acts as a buffer against the detrimental impact of scarcity. However, a higher level of income inequality in our community can fray our sense of social trust.”

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Book:Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things
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“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthPainHappinessValuesEvilVirtueMoralityIndependenceGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“We also know, of course, that human beings are not perfectly rational calculators. Our behavior and decisions are based on a mixture of calculation, emotions, and internalized norms, with calculation often a minor component of the cocktail.”

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Book:Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth
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“The key with a question offense is to move your freak from the emotional state to the rational one. I know I know and I know how good it feels when you’re stressed out to attack the source of that stress in what looks like a rational manner, but, um, you’re yelling, pointing your finger at me, and jumping up and down. Do you want me to react to the yelling or to the facts?”

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Book:Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager
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“As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a system of ethics, however exalted; nor only scientific knowledge, however extensive; nor just a practical social morality, however admirable or efficient. I mean an organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny, beyond and above the practical affairs of every day, transcending the present and the existing systems of law and social structure. The prerequisite today is that any such religion shall appeal potentially to all mankind; and that its intellectual and rational sides shall not be incompatible with scientific knowledge but on the contrary based on it.”

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Author:Julian Huxley
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“Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“I treat my thoughts like an old person treats their valuables: I cannot for the life of me proceed to throwing them out.”

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Book:Healology
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“Our enemies are quite good for relentlessly keeping us sharp and on our toes. This especially goes for sincere philosophers. They use their enemies to challenge their arguments so that they can know the weak points in their own reasoning and how to argue for and strengthen their position. There are just none like one's enemies to always look for his mistakes and do it harder than anyone else.”

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Book:Killosophy
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“Rationality is a matter of making allowed moves within language games. Imagination creates the games that reason proceeds to play. Then, exemplified by people such as Plato and Newton, it keeps modifying those games so that playing them is more interesting and profitable. Reason cannot get outside of the latest circle that imagination has drawn. It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that imagination holds the primacy.”

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Author:Rorty Richard
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“What’s emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who’re solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning ‘square’ rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn’t that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it’s capable of coming up with a solution.”

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Book:Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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“For the most part, people strenuously resist any redefinition of morality, because it shakes them to the very core of their being to think that in pursuing virtue they may have been feeding vice, or in fighting vice they may have in fact been fighting virtue.”

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Author:Stefan Molyneux
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“Annie clouded up. For a second, he thought she was going to erupt, and flinched. She saw that...and got control of herself with an visible effort. She took three deep breaths, each longer than the last, and her features became serene. All at once it seemed totally clear to Mike that she was right and he was nuts - that his ingenius theory was nonsense, childish, fantasty bullshit. His conviction evaporated, and he was ashamed. He felt his cheeks grow hot, groped for words with which to backtrack - "I have to admit I have no better explanation for the the facts," Annie said slowly. Again, Mike did an emotional instant 180. "Holy shit -" She held up a hand. "I am going to think now. Very hard, for a long time. You will be as quiet as possible while I do." She got up from the computer, went to the bed, and lay down. "Think yourself, or read, or play games with the headphones on, or go Topside if you like." She clasped her hands on her belly, closed her eyes and appeared to go to sleep”

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Book:The Free Lunch
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“Most unintelligent or foolish people do not regard themselves as that; they regard themselves as not-that-intelligent or not-that-wise.”

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Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“Knowing you, I became mindless. Having wasted previous wishes, I'm riddled with regrets Feeling you, I became hopeless. Adrift in chasms, I surrender to a caress. Loving you, I became love. My universe became love. Planets rotate on love's axes and apples fall to be near their beloveds. No longer a rationalist, I assert my existence with love. I love, therefore I exist, therefore I love.”

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Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders’ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking—that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action—that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise—that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality—that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind—that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say ‘It is,’ you are refusing to say ‘I am.’ By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?’- he is declaring: ‘Who am I to live?”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man’s instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything else—and the alternative is that state of living death which you now see within you and around you, the state of a thing unfit for existence, no longer human and less than animal, a thing that knows nothing but pain and drags itself through its span of years in the agony of unthinking self-destruction.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthPainHappinessValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest - but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness—to value the failure of your values—is an insolent negation of morality.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyHappinessValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Man’s life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being—not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement—not survival at any price, since there’s only one price that pays for man’s survival: reason.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man—for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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