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Rational Quotes

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Rational Quotes

“The great scientific achievements are research programmes which can be evaluated in terms of progressive and degenerative problemshifts; and scientific revolutions consist of one research programme superceding (overtaking in progress) another. This methodology offers a new rational reconstruction of science.”

ScienceTermProgressRevolutionOffersAchievementResearchRationalProgressiveProgrammesReconstructionMethodologyScientific RevolutionOvertaking
Author:Imre Lakatos
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“I think the idea that the hedge fund manager gets lower taxes than the taxi driver or the physics professor is insane. The legislators who leave that policy in place are derelict in their duties to be rational and fair. There are plenty of them in both political parties. It's totally outrageous.”

ThinkingIdeasPoliticalPartyPolicyDutyTaxesFairsPhysicsRationalInsanePlentyManagersFundDriversProfessorsPolitical PartiesOutrageousTaxiLegislatorsHedge FundDerelict
Author:Charlie Munger
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“Life, from beginning to end, is fear. Yes, it is pain, yes, it is desire, but more than anything it is fear; a certain amount rational, an enormous amount irrational. All political cruelties stem from that overwhelming fear. To push back the threatening forces, to offer primitive sacrifices, to give up some in the hope that others will be savedthat is the power struggle. That is the outsidedness of the poor, the feeble, the infantile. That is the outsidedness of Jews. That is the outsidedness of blacks. That is the outsidedness of women.”

GivingEndsPainPoliticalDesireCertainPoliticsForceFearPoorStruggleSacrificeAmountOffersGiving UpJewEnormousDiscriminationRationalCrueltyOverwhelmingPrimitiveIrrationalStemThreateningInfantilePower Struggle
Author:Vivian Gornick
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“Johnson is wise, Boswell foolish; Johnson warns and abstains, Boswell plunges; Johnson is rather a great man writing than a greatwriter, Boswell is a great writer and an ordinary man; and they are two of a kind, abysmal melancholics and compulsive socializers, afraid of solitude and afraid of death and dissolution, victims of themselves, meant for each other, needing each other, needing evidence and arguments (Boswell is a lawyer, Johnson magisterially dictates to him some of his briefs), making beautiful models of rational discourse out of the useful substance of all they know.”

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Author:Marvin Mudrick
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“The visible universe is subject to quantification, and is so by necessity. … Between you and me only reason will be the judge … since you proceed according to the rational method, so shall I. … I will also give reason and take it. … This generation has an innate vice. It can’t accept anything that has been discovered by a contemporary!”

GivingHas BeensReasonUniverseAcceptingGenerationsSubjectsJudgingMethodVicesContemporaryRationalVisibleInnateThis GenerationBetween You And Me
Author:Adelard of Bath
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“The rationale for accepting or rejecting any theory is thus fundamentally based on the idea of problem-solving progress. If one research tradition has solved more important problems than its rivals, then accepting that tradition is rational precisely to the degree that we are aiming to "progress," i.e., to maximize the scope f solved problems. In other words, the choice of one tradition over its rivals is a progressive (and thus a rational) choice precisely to the extent that the chosen tradition is a better problem solver than its rivals.”

IfsImportantIdeasProblemScienceChoicesAcceptingProgressTheoryDegreesResearchTraditionChosenRationalOver ItProgressiveProblem SolvingRationalityScopeRivalsRejectingRationaleProblem SolversSolved Problems
Book:Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth
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“As an element in human progress, the right of private property, in importance, has taken first and almost only place in the current systems of law and of political economy. While admitting its great importance, we cannot conceal the fact that the writers on those subjects have wholly failed to distinguish between its use and its abuse, or to recognize its rational and equitable limits.”

FirstsHumansFactsUseLawPoliticalEconomyTakenProgressSubjectsLimitsElementsAbuseImportancePropertyCurrentsRationalPrivate PropertyAdmittingHuman ProgressEquitablePolitical Economy
Author:Joshua K. Ingalls
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“Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in mysticism. To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe.”

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Author:Albert Schweitzer
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“I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.”

MayLongEndsSelfAgeDeathPurposeWishPrinciplesObviousRationalOld AgeThreadPreservationWretchedInnateRottenEndeavourSelf PreservationRemnants
Author:Lord Chesterfield
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“I can hardly bring myself to caution you against drinking, because I am persuaded that I am writing to a rational creature, a gentleman, and not to a swine. However, that you may not be insensibly drawn into that beastly custom of even sober drinking and sipping, as the sots call it, I advise you to be of no club whatsoever.”

WritingMayI CanCreaturesDrinkingClubsRationalGentlemanCustomsSoberCautionAdviseYou AgainSwineBeastlySipping
Book:Lord Chesterfield's Letters
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“They are men and women who tend to believe that the human being is perfectible and social progress predictable, and that the instrument for effecting the two is reason; that truths are transitory and empirically determined; that equality is desirable and attainable through the action of state power; that social and individual differences, if they are not rational, are objectionable, and should be scientifically eliminated; that all people and societies strive to organize themselves upon a rationalist and scientific paradigm.”

PeopleIfsMenShouldBelieveHumansTwoStatesReasonActionIndividualSocialDifferencesHuman BeingsProgressMen And WomenInstrumentsStriveDeterminedRationalOrganizeDesirableParadigmPredictableTransitorySocial ProgressIndividual Differences
Author:William F. Buckley, Jr.
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“The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, or to dispute, forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from self-opinion.”

MenFirstsDoeSoulSelfLawSinSimpleOpinionVirtuePureOfficeSpringSuperiorsNakedRationalObedienceHeavenlyCommandmentsSubmissionDisputesBenefactorsSelf Opinion
Book:Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays
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“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.”

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Author:Warren Buffett
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“While the apostles of the new so-called "behavioral" theory present ample evidence of how often human beings make irrational financial decisions, it remains to be seen whether these decisions lead to predictable errors that create systematic mispricings upon which rational investors can readily and economically capitalize.”

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Author:John C. Bogle
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“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.”

KnowsWellsMadeSaidNextHoursAnswersGoneHugeSpeechPreparedInvestingRationalAttractiveSatOne TimeElsewhereBusiness SuccessRationalityOne WordCharlieAttractive Woman
Author:Warren Buffett
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“Gossip, public, private, social - to fight against it either by word or pen seems, after all, like fighting with shadows. Everybody laughs at it, protests against it, blames and despises it; yet everybody does it, or at least encourages others in it: quite innocently, unconsciously, in such a small, harmless fashion - yet we do it. We must talk about something, and it is not all of us who can find a rational topic of conversation, or discuss it when found.”

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Author:Dinah Maria Murlock Craik
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“Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of.”

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Book:Introductory lectures on political-economy, delivered at Oxford, in Easter term MDCCCXXXI. With remarks on tithes and on poor-laws and on penal colonies
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“There is no "scientific worldview" just as there is no uniform enterprise "science" - except in the minds of metaphysicians, school masters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche... There is no objective principle that could direct us away from the supermarket "religion" or the supermarket "art" toward the more modern, and much more expensive supermarket "science." Besides, the search for such guidance would be in conflict with the idea of individual responsibility which allegedly is an important ingredient of a "rational" or scientific age.”

MindArtImportantIdeasWould BeAgeSchoolIndividualResponsibilityPrinciplesModernParticularMastersConflictAchievementDirectScientistObjectivesRationalGuidanceExpensiveEnterpriseIngredientsUniformsWorldviewNicheBlindedSupermarketsIndividual Responsibility
Author:Paul Feyerabend
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“The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties.”

WorldMindRealJoyPleasureSolitudeCapableAdvantageIndependenceNobleRationalAcquireDestructiveMelancholyContemptIdleDiscontentApprehensionJoy Of LifeDeceitfulDistasteAffording
Author:Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
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“How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWellsDoeArtTwoDifferentSometimesReasonArtistSufferingSpeakSolutionsScientistRationalDifferent ThingsLeapImaginativeArt And ScienceTrue ArtistsInterconnectionRoving
Author:Isaac Asimov
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“The attempt to apply rational arithmetic to a problem in geometry resulted in the first crisis in the history of mathematics. The two relatively simple problems -- the determination of the diagonal of a square and that of the circumference of a circle -- revealed the existence of new mathematical beings for which no place could be found within the rational domain.”

FirstsTwoProblemFoundSimpleExistenceDeterminationMathematicsCrisisCirclesRationalMathematicalSquaresDomainGeometryArithmeticDiagonal
Author:David van Dantzig
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