Best 109 quotes in «irrational quotes» category

People will assign irrational importance to almost anything in quotes on top of a pleasant image

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

The core of the Marxist critique of capitalism is that although the individual capitalist is rational (as liberals assume), the capitalist system itself is irrational.

Racists are irrational and illogical in their attempts to justify their prejudices.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

Research – and using what you learn from it to analyze every situation – is what separates being unreasonable from being irrational.

Sleep is the gateway to those nightly visitations of the irrational.

Symptoms, those you believe you recognize, seem to you irrational because you take them in an isolated manner, and you want to interpret them directly.

The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.

There is nothing quite so gentle, deep, and irrational as running--and nothing quite so savage, so wild.

The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape.

The more irrational of us are worried about the millennium ending - as if a date would really matter.

The irrational haunts the metaphysical.

Through humour, we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

To hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition.

To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.

When people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed.

We expect others to act rationally even though we are irrational.

We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.

When we approach history, we are dealing with a conglomeration of irrational continua. Those who deal with history by nonrational processes are the ones who make history, the actors in it.

You need to go and find someone to teach you the rudiments of irrational discourse.

When you're in the throes of this romantic love, it's overwhelming - you're out of control, you're irrational, you're going to the gym at 6 A.M. every day - Why? Because she's there.

To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.

Who is more irrational, the guy who believes in a God he can't see, or a guy who's offended by a God he doesn't believe in?

Writing fiction is fundamentally an irrational act.

Don't be in temper, to leave so quickly, that I may be dying. But all too soon, the leaves and debris will gather elsewhere.

Black(people) hold onto their God just as the drunken man holds on to the street lamp post—for physical support only.

Your trust in rationality makes you irrational.

A sane man is at his sanest just after he has orgasmed.

COUNT. The fact is, when you start losing your temper, even the most tightly controlled imagination will run wild, just as it does in dreams.

[Earl, on liking someone] Because, honestly, the rational part of me know for a rock-solid fact that I would never, ever get with Madison Hartner. But that was just the rational part of me. There's always a stupid irrational part of you, too, and you can't get rid of it. You can never completely kill off that tiny absurd spark of hope that this girl-against all odds, although she could date any guy at school, not to mention guys at college, and even though you look like the Oatmeal Monster and are a compulsive eater and suffer from constant congestion and say so many stupid things per day that it seems like a Stupid Things company is paying you to do it- this girl might like you.

Earthquake means destruction; dictator means destruction! In the case of earthquake, you need a strong building; in the case of dictator, you need an educated rational mind, because an irrational ignorant mind always serves the dictator!

In this connection I must mention too a not altogether rational idea which I had nourished more or less vaguely for a long time: the notion that before I could achieve greatness as a writer I would have to pass through some ordeal. For this ordeal I had waited in vain. Even total war (I was never in uniform) failed to ruffle my life. I seemed doomed to quietness.

Government as we now know it in the USA and other economically advanced countries is so manifestly horrifying, so corrupt, counterproductive, and outright vicious, that one might well wonder how it continues to enjoy so much popular legitimacy and to be perceived so widely as not only tolerable but indispensable. The answer, in overwhelming part, may be reduced to a two-part formula: bribes and bamboozlement (classically "bread and circuses"). Under the former rubric falls the vast array of government "benefits" and goodies of all sorts, from corporate subsidies and privileges to professional grants and contracts to welfare payments and health care for low-income people and other members of the lumpenproletariat. Under the latter rubric fall such measures as the government schools, the government's lapdog news media, and the government's collaboration with the producers of professional sporting events and Hollywood films. Seen as a semi-integrated whole, these measures give current governments a strong hold on the public's allegiance and instill in the masses and the elites alike a deep fear of anything that seriously threatens the status quo.

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke - Aye! and what then?

If you're rational you don't get to believe whatever you want to believe.

I love you. I love you a thousand times. I love you an irrational number. And I will continue to love you long after all this has died and been reborn and we are nothing more than a pair of reincarnated eyes.

In my experience, his reaction was typical of many churchmen when lay people like myself try to explain the irrational using the 'God's Plan' argument. They raise an eyebrow and look at you as if you're slightly bonkers.

Invalidating someone else is not merely disagreeing with something that the other person said. It is a process in which individuals communicate to another that the opinions and emotions of the target are invalid, irrational, selfish, uncaring, stupid, most likely insane, and wrong, wrong, wrong. Invalidators let it be known directly or indirectly that their targets views and feelings do not count for anything to anybody at any time or in any way.

Irrationality is the exclusive preserve of humans as among all creatures only we have the power to rationalise, that being the art of packaging patently irrational as apparently rational.

Every irrational and unscientific belief will ruin your life! Your own wrong belief will be your own tragic punishment!

In periods such as the early Middle Ages, which in general were free from social conflict, there is not, as a rule, any radical antagonism between artistic intention and technique; the art forms and the technique are employed harmoniously and say the same thing in different ways, the one factor being no more rational or irrational than the other. But in times like the Gothic age, when the whole of culture was rent by antagonisms, it often happens that the spiritual and material elements in art speak different languages and, as in the present case, the technique appears rational but the artistic aims irrational.

Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Issac because God told him to do that. Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing.

It is irrational to assume that you can fault someone because of the color of their skin, no matter what color that may be.

It's time to demand that the faithful keep their personal choices, preferences and beliefs in irrational and sometimes dangerous things strictly private. Everyone is absolutely free to believe what they want, provided they do not harass others (or force, or kill them) .. But nobody has the right to insist on privileges simply because they are supporters of one or other of the world's many religions." From: "Gesels van een imaginaire god" ('Scourges of an imaginary god')

It is only other people’s ridiculous beliefs or customs that seem ridiculous to us.

It is so easy at times for a lonely individual to begin fantasizing about what the people outside are saying about him and, in result, irrationally and fearfully, and sometimes angrily, fancy himself a villain.

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

It's a bit like sympathetic magic in a way: the usual Western presumption that 'primitive' rituals mimic what they desire to achieve--that phallic objects might be believed to increase male potency and playacting rainfall might somehow bring it about. I am suspicious of such obvious connections and I suspect that the connections among things, people, and processes can be equally irrational. I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs--is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.