The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention.
It is the business of man to become acquainted with the material universe in all of its manifestations, so far as may be possible, in order to provide a foundation of knowledge on which the reasoning mind of man may increasingly build.
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
The cold rationalism simply covers for raw, wounded emotion. The more driven people are by the mind, the more they feel and further encode their feelings. The thickness of the tarpaulin cover is as the size of the emotion.
Rationally speaking, blaming one's behavior on alcohol or drugs is like blaming the ladder by which you descended into a pit, or the staircase that took you down to a cellar, for what you found there.
Honest dishonesty. That’s quite the oxymoron – but I like the originality that you’ve brought to bear in the art of rationalization. Maybe you should consider becoming a lawyer,” he added jokingly.
All this. They have all this, and what do we get? Walls and tickets and concrete and stink. Rations and hopelessness and rage. I hate them,” she said, the malice in her words like the lingering taste of a bad kiss.
The only Thought which Philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of History, is the simple conception of Reason; that Reason is the Sovereign of the World; that the history of the world, therefore, presents us with a rational process.
Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the community. All children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind.
But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.
A mother is an individual who'd go to any length for someone else, beyond rationality, beyond her physical body, her social bindings of state, country, her kind. That's the most horrifying individual you'll ever meet.
Every sane person has to find every day some manner of accommodating the impossible, some way of covering up for the failures of the rational world. This might actually be a reasonable definition of sanity.
Just as the moon derives the light it reflects from the sun, so the rational human mind derives a created ability to know from its origin, God.
This has suggested to some that the very structure of human thought is oppositional-that is to say, rational and associative, rather than linear and categorical.
Like Midas, the Rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can never get a square meal of experience.
Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.
You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational and believing things that are true. If you want to set yourself apart from other people you have to do things that are arbitrary and believe things that are false.
Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that ...
I don't think because I hang out with enough black people, I'm gonna turn black. What kind of rationalization is that? I'm just friends with people that I like. I don't care what skin color you are.
In the span of my own lifetime I observed such wondrous progress in plant evolution that I look forward optimistically to a healthy, happy world as soon as its children are taught the principles of simple and rational living.
If the people of this religion are asked about the proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation, and strive to kill their advers...
