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

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...

What the efficient market hypothesis doesn’t account for is that people are not always rational. Just ask any divorce lawyer.

Man: an irrational being who imagines himself to be a rational one.

What a deep [trust] in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in...

We feel a deep pleasure from realizing that we believe something in common with our friends, and different from most people. We feel an even deeper pleasure letting everyone know of this fact. This feeling...

Intellectually, what is stimulating to a young man is a problem of obvious practical importance. A young man learning economics, for example, ought to hear lectures from individualists and socialists, protectionists and free-traders, inflationists and...

Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before...

If someone does not believe in fairies, he does not need to teach his children ‘There are no fairies’; he can omit to teach them the word ‘fairy’.

That which does not come by logic, does not leave by logic.

And when the Duke of Alva ordered three hundred Citizens to be put to Death together at Antwerp, a Lady who saw the Sight was presently afterwards deliver’d of a Child without a Head. So...

He remembered having said to his uncle (with a solemn dogmatism better befitting a much younger man): “Surely it is possible to love with the head as well as the heart.” Mr. Delagardie had replied,...

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

If we were rational enough to judge what we are fed based on what we are fed, those in the business of selling us hope (i.e., public speakers, presidents, priests, etc.) wouldn’t wear suits.

If God meant for people to fly, He would have given them brains.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes,...

It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,’ we might believe them; but were they to...

Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse.

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

gut” when they should be more rational.

The power of reason is thought small in these days, but I remain an unrepentant rationalist. Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces...

A true rationalist ought to be effective in the real world.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable...

The true self is that which is in touch with reality. The false self is the aspects of your personality that are adapted to threats and no longer consciously recognizes either the adaptation or the...

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...

The sexual mechanisms of the two genders are just not compatible, that’s the horrible truth of it. (…)This is a truth we dare not acknowledge these days – because sameness is our religion and heretics...

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

To leave a man’s ego bigger, retweet him. To leave his faculty of reasoning better, challenge his tweet.

The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person...

When…did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A...

welfare.” Such a mind may be hampered by others, it may be silenced, proscribed, imprisoned, or destroyed; it cannot be forced; a gun is not an argument. (An example and symbol of this attitude is...

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

Imperfect knowledge, incomplete assessment of feedback, limited memory and recall, as well as poor problem-solving skills result in a form of rationality that attains not optimal decisions but more or less satisfactory compromises between conflicting...

You cannot connect with anyone except through reality.

The essence of extended rationality is to know when you are being irrational.

The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people...

Then you get the wrong answer and you can’t go to the Moon that way! Nature isn’t a person, you can’t trick them into believing something else, if you try to tell the Moon it’s...

The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don’t agree.

Dr. Peter Boghossian’s A Manual for Creating Atheists is a precise, passionate, compassionate and brilliantly reasoned work that will illuminate any and all minds capable of openness and curiosity. This is not a bedtime story...

It’s difficult to know where to begin, sir.”Yes, the beginning is the tricky part. But perhaps there is no beginning, perhaps we can’t look that far back.’ He got up from his desk and went...

The Use of the Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature and Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming...

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. This project is ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and ethically mandatory. The metabolic pathways of...

I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.

If man was a logical creature: his last suspect—namely, his mouth—was going to be the first; whenever he thinks that someone, or, something is smelly.

The idea that reason and rationality is somehow separate from and antithetical to ones ‘ heart’ is one of the most absurd theologies I have ever in my life heard.” ~R. Alan Woods (“Just Keeping...

Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.

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

because a propositional justification exists for doing one thing, but not for doing another.” But why should we be reasonable, is the next come-back. Again, the answer is obvious. For one, because it would be...

Well, pray if you like, only you’d do better to use your judgment.