#rationality

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#rationality #values #satisfaction

Considering he was neither priest nor scholar, the young man gave sensible, thoughtful replies -- the more so, perhaps, for being untrained, for he had not learned what he should believe or should not believe. Present a statement to him in flagrant contradiction to all Christian doctrine and he could be persuaded to agree on its good sense, unless he remembered it was the sort of thing of which pyres are made for the incautious. ↗

— Iain Pears

#doctrine #education #freedom #freedom-of-religion #freedom-of-thought

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

— Jane Austen

#compliments #discussion #disdain #intelligence #opposition

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something. ↗

— Krzysztof Kieslowski

#contemporaries #lost #much #our #rationality

Undoubtely, modern Science is rational and the scientific method is based on rationality. But rationality is a wider concept, and it can explore what is beyond the scope of Science and its method. ↗

— Corrado Ghinamo

#science #scientific-method #beauty

The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine... And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment. ↗

— Harlan Ellison

#realism #revenge #experience

It seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mistery. ↗

— Zoë Heller

#failure-of-imagination #rationality #faith

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#free-thought #freedom-of-expression #rationality #freedom

The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#class #irrationality #nirvana #reason #society

If you want to get men to act reasonably, you must set about persuading them in a maniacal manner. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#rationality #men