Rational Quotes

See also Core English Vocabulary (R) Quotes

I picked a reverence for medicine because I rather hero-worshiped my father (a former doctor), and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don`t admire crystals and chewing willow bark and herbal remedies.

- Hugh Laurie

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn`t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

- Taylor Wane

To be bothered wherever you go - it`s not a rational thing to want at all.

- Colin Firth

(regarding her visit to a psychic who told her some accurate things about her late grandmother) I`m a very rational person but I pray every day.

- Emmy Rossum

The only reason I ever want to make movies is if there are characters that find bits of themselves that they didn`t understand. I don`t believe we are fully rational beings. I don`t believe that any explanation that we ever give for our behavior is adequate.

- Neil Jordan

Through humor, we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant. It also heightens our sense of survival and preserves our sanity.

- Charles Chaplin

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

- Bertrand Russell

Passive acceptance of the teacher`s wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.

- Bertrand Russell

I suppose one can try to search for logic and a rational behind why people choose to buy certain products over others. If people are buying more products that support Bush, it may either suggest more confidence in the incumbent over Kerry. On the other hand, if products supporting the opponent are selling better, it could be a sign of waning confidence in the incumbent.

- Bob Burns

Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can`t even think straight.

- Marilyn French

In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders.

- Steve Allen

But Mike is a straight shooter, and this is probably as good of a situation as it could be. This is one of the rational, reasonable ways you would think it would have to come to an end.

- Steve Young

There`s a kind of desperation to the characters I`m interested in. They`re all in extremely heightened states in a heightened situation. And in the course of my films, we`re exploring all of their fears -- the rational and the irrational.

- William Friedkin

The obsession required to see a feature through from concept to release is not a rational thing to do with your brief time on this planet. Nor is it something to which an intelligent person should aspire.

- Yahoo Serious

My purpose is to make a movie to make you warm. To give you some heat. Now, this rational world has become a place where only what is cool is good. Do you cut the movie on the basis of the beat of modernity or the basis of the beat of your own heart?

- Emir Kusturica

The movie business is very much like that: people in authority making purely emotional decisions instead of interesting rational ones.

- Bill Forsyth

Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.

- Brian Adams

No rational trier of fact could find that the infringing Flying B logo enabled the defendants to generate more income ... than they would have otherwise done,

- Robert King

I`m not rational enough to be a good journalist.

- Jim Harrison

. . . (today) we accept, indeed regard as a platitude, an idea that Aristotle rejected, that someone can have one virtue while lacking others . For Aristotle, as for Socrates, practical reason required the dispositions of action and feeling to be harmonized; if any disposition was properly to count as a virtue, it had to be part of a rational structure that included all the virtues. This is quite different from our assumption (in the modern world) that these kinds of virtuous disposition are enough like other psychological characteristics to explain how one person can, so to speak, do better in one area than another. . . . (today) we do not believe in the unity of the virtues.

- Bernard Williams

The rational individualist is not the enemy of benevolence or civility, but their truest exemplar.

- David Kelley

Tony had a message to deliver to us and he did it in a very mature, rational way. He`s a two-time champion. When he comes to us, we`re going to listen to him.

- Jim Hunter

There simply is no rational business plan we can continue to operate under with fuel at the price it is today,

- Jim May

There simply is no rational business plan we can continue to operate under with fuel at the price it is today.

- Jim May

Labor was marching toward the goal of industrial democracy and contributing constructively toward a more rational arrangement of our domestic economy.

- John L. Lewis

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.

- Edward Bond

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.

- Malcolm Gladwell

Everybody thinks scientists are cold and rational. The truth is that nothing could be more passionate than the search for scientific discoveries that break down barriers and change paradigms of thinking. Working with these artists was such an amazing experience that opened us up in ways we could never guess. We found that we had so much in common.

- Michael Hayden

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.

- John Locke

I never got good at predicting what millions of people will suddenly decide is rational.

- Larry Niven

Only exceptionally rational men can afford to be absurd.

- A.J. Nicholson

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.

- Abraham Clark

It is only by the rational use of technology; to control and guide what technology is doing; that we can keep any hopes of a social life more desirable than our own: or in fact of a social life which is not appalling to imagine.

- Alan Chambers

Original sin is the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of the deep, universal and early manifested sinfulness of men in all ages, of every class, and in every part of the world.

- Alan Feduccia

So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational.

- Alan Feldman

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.

- Alan Stark

Many mathematicians derive part of their self-esteem by feeling themselves the proud heirs of a long tradition of rational thinking; I am afraid they idealize their cultural ancestors.

- Albert Haldemann

It`s all emotion. But there`s nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are on vacation, we are not rational; we are emotional.

- Alex Cejka

In fact, in more cases than not, when we are rational, we`re actually unhappy. Emotion is good; passion is good. Being into what we`re into, provided that it`s a healthy pursuit, it`s a good thing.

- Alex Cejka

But it is strange how many rational beings believe the ultimate truths of the universe to be reducible to patterns on a blackboard.

- Alex Fisher

The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.

- Alex Hamilton

To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.

- Alex Kornhauser

There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

- Alexander Downer

Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational.

- Alexandra Picavet

The only reason of the institution of civil government; and the only rational ground of submission to it, is the common safety and utility.

- Allan Moss

For by such poor figures I may, in passing, symbolize that really rational relation of our personal experience to universal conscious experience.

- Allayne Barrilleaux

It has a sound and rational circulating medium, a real and definite representative of wealth.

- Alleggrie Guinn

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

- Allen Hornthal

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.

- Alvaro Cifuentes

I add this, that rational ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.

- Alvina Tan