Rationality Quotes - Page 2

Lies don't make you happy. They just make you lie about being happy.

When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another - except brute, physical force.

Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.

You say that it is time to shake off the Mist, but Mankind walks in a Mist; that Reason which you cry up as the Glory of this Age is a Proteus and Cameleon that changes its Shape almost in every Man: there is no Folly that may not have a thousand Reasons produc'd to advance it into the Class of Wisdom. Reason itself is a Mist.

Well,' said Hawksmoor. 'It's a theory and a theory can do no harm.

Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.

Faith is stronger than so-called reason.

Elinor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.

the thing about fear is that it defies the laws of rationality. It creates its own laws instead

Of course, I rationalize the fear. I realize it’s not real, that my house isn’t burning down, that the deer aren’t going to kill me.

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.

Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.

...reason rationalizes reality for him (Dr. Nathan) as it does for the rest of us, in the Freudian sense of providing a more palatable or convenient explanation, and there are so many subjects about which we should not be reasonable.

Melancholy is an escape not from reality, but unreality of the world.

Tribalism is an addiction that is driven by false beliefs that need to be reflected back to be perceived as true.

Spiritual": religion without any rules. All the comfort of fictitious friends with none of their demands.

Rationality and common sense never goes out of fashion.

Leaders console the world with their speeches, heroes console the world with their actions.

When you go with first principles, a giant light goes off in what you think is a city and turns out to be an insane asylum.

Culture makes lies plausible through exposure to time. It makes prejudice seem like physics intergenerationally. It is therefore the most dangerous opponent of philosophy, because it feels the most credible to the average person.