Quotessence
Home / Topics / Rational Quotes

Rational Quotes

Browse 1559 quotes about Rational.

Related topics

MenIfsThinkingPeopleReasonWorldHumansMindWayIrrationalBelievePersonsMayMeanShouldAnimalKnowsMoralNeedsDoeRational ThoughtDecisionSeemsCreaturesIndividualBeliefGivingSelfUseArgumentTwoWellsEmotionalFactsIdeasLawProcessOrderPrinciplesTermFirstsHas BeensKindMadeSocialWantRealActionFeelingsFormPhilosophyProblemStatesTryingValuesAbleBasesLongMatterViewsArtChoicesEvidenceOpinionPurposeUniverseAtheismHuman BeingsReligionWholeBehaviorBrainCultureEndsExplanationHeartLogicalSoulUnderstandingWritingFeelsImportantPassionSpiritCapableCommonDesireEmotionInterestPoliticalReligiousSometimesWould BeAcceptingCoursesLooksSaidDifferentNaturalRational Decisionsmore

Rational Quotes

“To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be.”

KnowsMayEnjoyChanceResultsKnow HowDesignFoolLuckyHighestFoundationBlindMereEnvyAccidentsRichesRationalDiminishPreferencePrudent
Book:Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
Create image

“Providence has fixed the limits of human enjoyment by immovable boundaries, and has set different gratifications at such a distance from each other, that no art or power can bring them together. This great law it is the business of every rational being to understand, that life may not pass away in an attempt to make contradictions consistent, to combine opposite qualities, and to unite things which the nature of their being must always keep asunder.”

HumansMayArtDifferentTogetherLawQualityLimitsOppositesDistanceBoundariesRationalFixedEnjoymentConsistentContradictionProvidenceGratificationPassing Away
Book:Life and Writings
Create image

“There is nothing wanting to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day.”

PeopleWorldShouldTogetherReligionRationalDisinterested
Book:A Supplementary Volume to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: Containing Pieces of Poetry, Not Inserted in Warburton's and Warton's Editions : and a Collection of Letters, Now First Published
Create image

“There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.”

MindBelieveMeanDoeReasonInspirationFaithThreeForceChristianitySonAuthorityInstitutionsProofContraryRationalFormerLatterCustoms
Author:Blaise Pascal
Create image

“Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.”

MenMindHumansReasonUseGuiltRationalConfusionFacultyHuman Mind
Book:Celebrated Speeches of Chatham, Burke, and Erskine: To which is Added the Arguement of Mr. Mackintosh in the Case of Peltier
Create image

“The desire for magic cannot be eradicated. Even the most supposedly rational people attempt to practice magic in love and war. We simultaneously possess the most primitive of brain stems and the most sophisticated of cortices. The imperatives of each coexist uneasily.”

PeopleWarDesireBrainPracticeMagicRationalPrimitiveSophisticatedStemImperativesCoexistLove And War
Book:What Do Women Want?: Essays by Erica Jong
Create image

“Conversation in its happiest development is a link, equally exquisite and adequate, between mind and mind, a system by which men approach one another with sympathy and enjoyment, a field for the finest amenities of civilization, for the keenest and most intelligent display of social activity. It is also our solace, our inspiration, and our most rational pleasure. It is a duty we owe to one another; it is our common debt to humanity.”

MenMindInspirationHumanitySocialPleasureCommonFieldsDutyDevelopmentCivilizationActivityConversationApproachIntelligentDebtRationalEnjoymentLinksDisplayFinestAdequateExquisiteSolaceAmenities
Author:Agnes Repplier
Create image

“Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought.”

ReasonProblemSciencePrinciplesIntellectualFilledComplexesStoresRationalSubtleDevicesIncapableRational ThoughtComplex Problems
Book:Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings
Create image

“Man, being not only a religious, but also a social being, requires for the promotion of his rational happiness religious institutions, which, while they give a proper direction to devotion, at the same time make a wise and profitable improvement of his social feelings.”

MenGivingFeelingsReligionSocialReligiousWiseInstitutionsImprovementDevotionRationalPromotionProfitableSocial Being
Book:Select sermons: delivered on various occasions from important passages of Scripture
Create image

“Sanity is a matter of culture and convention. If it's a crazy culture you live in, then you have to be irrational to want to conform. A completely rational person would recognize that the culture was crazy and refuse to conform. But by not conforming, he is the one who would be judged crazy by that particular society.”

IfsWantPersonsMatterWould BeCultureCrazyParticularRefuseRationalSanityJudgedConventionsIrrationalConform
Book:A Stranger in My Grave
Create image

“Words can enhance experience, but they can also take so much away. We see an insect and at once we abstract certain characteristics and classify it - a fly. And in that very cognitive exercise, part of the wonder is gone. Once we have labeled the things around us we do not bother to look at them so carefully. Words are part of our rational selves, and to abandon them for a while is to give freer reign to our intuitive selves.”

GivingLooksSelfCertainWonderGoneExerciseIntuitionRationalBotherAbstractCharacteristicsAbandonReignInsectsIntuitiveCognitive
Author:Jane Goodall
Create image

“In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. The chance's of theism's truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pedant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.”

MindWould BeChanceTheoryTruth IsEvidenceAtheistAppearanceRationalAgnosticHypocriteTheismPedantsPending
Book:The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
Create image

“Psychologist Nathaniel Branden speaks of a benevolent sense of life possible to those with rational, productive values, vividly contrasted with the coercive parasitic group-culture of mystics and altruists we live in, where people all around you seem a burdensome annoyance, a threat to your survival. Having been told from childhood that life is a zero-sum game in which you owe everything to others, at some level you worry all the time that someday the bastards will collect. And collect they do, every April 15th. Why do you think they call it collectivism?”

PeopleThinkingSeemsLife IsValuesCultureGamesSpeakLevelsWorryGroupsChildhoodSurvivalThreatRationalProductiveSomedayZeroAprilPsychologistCollectivismBenevolentAnnoyanceZero Sum Game
Author:L. Neil Smith
Create image

“The difference in sex does not hinder the ability of being strong on the levels of thinking, giving, having a strong willpower and the ability to take the right decision and the right position after studying all options, once the circumstances that favor creativity and rational thinking are available.”

ThinkingGivingDoeStrongSexDifferencesAbilityDecisionLevelsCreativityStudyPositionCircumstancesAvailableFavorsRationalWillpowerHinderRational ThinkingRight DecisionStrong Will
Author:Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah
Create image

“It would be a mistake to believe that one could come to any substantive understanding of politics by discussing abstractly the good, the right, the true, or the rational in complete abstraction from the way in which these items figure in the motivationally active parts of the human psyche, and particularly in abstraction from the way in which they impinge, even if indirectly, on human action.”

IfsWayBelieveHumansWould BeActionUnderstandingMistakeFiguresActiveRationalAbstractionItemsDiscussingHuman ActionsHuman Psyche
Book:Philosophy and Real Politics
Create image

“Yet the people, and even the clergy, incapable of forming any rational judgment of the business of peace and war, presumed to arraign the policy of Stilicho, who so often vanquished, so often surrounded, and so often dismissed the implacable enemy of the republic. The first moment of the public safety is devoted to gratitude and joy; but the second is diligently occupied by envy and calumny.”

PeopleFirstsWarMomentsJoyEnemyHistoryPolicyGratitudeJudgmentSafetyEnvyRationalRepublicDevotedIncapableRoman EmpireClergyCalumnyPublic Safety
Book:The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edited and Abridged): Abridged Edition
Create image

“The United States is strongly committed to the IPCC process of international cooperation on global climate change. We consider it vital that the community of nations be drawn together in an orderly, disciplined, rational way to review the history of our global environment, to assess the potential for future climate change, and to develop effective programs. The state of the science, the social and economic impacts, and the appropriate strategies all are crucial components to a global resolution. The stakes here are very high; the consequences, very significant.”

WayStatesTogetherNationsSocialProcessCommunityUnitedUnited StatesEnvironmentEconomicConsequenceProgramImpactStrategyClimateClimate ChangeInternationalCommittedSignificantRationalAppropriateResolutionReviewsCooperationCrucialStakesComponentsOrderlyInternational CooperationDrawn Together
Author:George H. W. Bush
Create image

“I used to refer to my drug use as putting the monster in the box. I wanted to be less, so I took more - simple as that. Anyway, I eventually decided that the reason Dr. Stone had told me I was hypomanic was that he wanted to put me on medication instead of actually treating me. So I did the only rational thing I could do in the face of such as insult - I stopped talking to Stone, flew back to New York, and married Paul Simon a week later.”

ReasonUseWantedFacesUsedSimpleTalkingWeekNew YorkDrugMarriedStonesDecidedAddictionBoxesMonstersRationalInsultDrsFlewMedicationDrug Use
Book:Wishful Drinking
Create image