Freedom rests on a rational distrust of government; government will always use its power to benefit the incumbent administration.
Perceived value is paramount for most diners; a feeling of satisfaction that what you’ve paid for is commensurate with what you’ve received. That is, provided your expectations are rational.
I am a believer in Adam Smith, who says that if you look at something that really contributes value to society, and you can deliver it at a reasonable price, then society will recognise that at some point because rational behaviour will come into play.
Feelings are more dangerous than ideas, because they aren’t susceptible to rational evaluation. They grow quietly, spreading underground, and erupt suddenly, all over the place.
You cannot ‘rationalize’ what is not rational to begin with – as if lying were called ‘truthization.’ There is no way to obtain more truth for a proposition by bribery, flattery, or the most passionate argument – you can make more people believe the proposition, but you cannot make it more true.
Gardening is not a rational act.
Democracy allows rhetoric, false empathy and emotion to pummel rational thinking – so it’s no wonder so many politicians thrive in it.
Insanity – a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
The legitimacy of coercive acts in a democracy arises from the process by which they are justified and by the degree to which we regard decisions as rational. If the justifications proceed properly, through recognized public institutions, and if they make sense to us, they are legitimate.
Bitcoin is really a fascinating example of how human beings create value, and is not always rational… tt is not a rational currency in that case.
Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
The Christian image of God is that of a rational being who believes in human progress.
For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence.
Learn computer science. It’s extraordinarily helpful. I like recommending learning economics as well so they think in terms of business, they have rational frameworks for looking at the world, but yeah, computer science is an amazing way to get into, even if you want to be CEO, having a tech background is helpful.
But it is strange how many rational beings believe the ultimate truths of the universe to be reducible to patterns on a blackboard.
If a severe pandemic materializes, all of society could pay a heavy price for decades of failing to create a rational system of health care that works for all of us.
I think that rational people in the world know that oil is a very important commodity for the rest of the world.
It is widely accepted and understood that consumer decisions are as much influenced by emotional attachments to a product or service as by factors like price and performance. So why is it that when it comes to most aspects of human transportation, the world still seems to believe people are rational machines?
Faith is an act of rational choice, which determines us to act as if certain things were true, and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true.
Buying a home is a very emotional process. It’s important to remain rational and stick with your price limit while buying.
I’ve always been attracted to Pertwee’s portrayal of the Doctor as dashing man-of-science, charming, sceptical, and rational.
Wonder, connected with a principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all knowledge and discover, and it is a principle even of piety; but wonder which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wonder, is the quality of an idiot.
Of course I am partisan in my politics, but my partisanship is rational – which, in my book, is not necessarily oxymoronic.
Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn’t require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.
Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science.
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.
Marketers know – no matter how deep the emotional connection or brand loyalty – when a product does not perform, rational thought overtakes emotion, and most consumers make a new choice.
If individuals are rational, there is no need to protect them against their own choices.
At the heart of both democracy and capitalism is a simple assumption that, across the board, people make free and relatively rational decisions: that we are, to borrow a medical term, Gillick Competent.
The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.
Sometimes, I work a little more from emotion than I do from rational thought.
Everything rational and sensible abandons me when I try to throw out photographs. Time and time again, I hold one over a wastebasket, and then find it impossible to release my fingers and let the picture drop and disappear.
Everyone who’s rational should have an interest in science. The future of our planet depends on our understanding of science… It’s something I value immensely.
The happy medium – truth in all things – is no longer either known or valued; to gain applause, one must write things so inane that they might be played on barrel-organs, or so unintelligible that no rational being can comprehend them, though on that very account, they are likely to please.
Our rational, realistic goals for ‘Better Call Saul’ were simply that it wouldn’t suck, and it wouldn’t embarrass us. It didn’t rise much higher than that, to be honest.
The EPA code needs to set forth a clear, regular, and rational system of penalties for violations of its code, with the amount of the penalty set in proportion to the amount of pollutant released by a given defendant, and no penalties imposed in the absence of any pollutant released.
I can’t speak for readers in general, but personally I like to read stories behind which there is some truth, something real and above all, something emotional. I don’t like to read essays on literature; I don’t like to read critical or rational or impersonal or cold disquisitions on subjects.
I’m very rational. I tend to let my head rule my heart.
I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it’s my way of making the world rational to me.
Force-backed humanitarianism, which relies on rational influence over events in other countries, may have been a more feasible project in the bipolar era of the Cold War, with its relatively defined and stable web of alliances and proxies.
A number of politicians have failed to recognise the consistent truth of history: that we’re both an emotional and a rational species, and that we make decisions very emotionally.
You won’t get a rational assessment of a political party from a member, and you won’t get a reasoned account of the joys of being ‘linked’ from somebody who’s already ‘in.’
With writing, you really have to have faith. You have to have some sort of confidence that if you keep at it, you will get where you need to go, because there are so many points where a rational person would quit.
Whichever theory we adopt to give a rational explanation of human existence, that theory must take into account and explain the mental nature we see at work in all modern communities.
We are convinced that locking Russia out of Europe is not rational.
I guess law was always interesting to me because you deal with constants. I like to deal with constants, abstracts, constants and reason and ration, rational approaches to things. I don’t know, I never really thought why I wanted to study law. But if you ask me whether I would do it again, absolutely.
Have rational expectations for future returns and avoid changing those expectations in response to the ephemeral noise coming from Wall Street.
The idea that there is a rational truth out there that is not embodied in a person’s politics is something I can’t understand or subscribe to.
Presented with the claims of nineteenth-century racist anthropology, a rational person will ask two sorts of questions: ‘What is the scientific status of the claims?’ ‘What social or ideological needs do they serve?’
I’ve learned over the years that ‘rational discussion’ accomplishes almost nothing in politics, particularly with people better educated than average.
What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists – whatever else they might be – might also be rational human beings; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions.
A king is always a king – and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex ever stand between them and rational converse.
If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesn’t get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational.
