Rationality doesn’t exist; right is absence of wrongness and wrong is what seems to be unfair.

People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life...

The type of journalism that relies on the reporter’s notion of what does or doesn’t “seem” correct or controversial is self-indulgent and irresponsible. It gives credence to the belief that we can intuit our way...

Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value secrecy for its own sake. It’s a way of...

Applause” light that tells a studio audience when to clap.

Now that science has helped us to overcome the awe of the unknown in nature, we are the slaves of social pressures of our own making. When called upon to act independently, we cry for...

Melancholy is an escape not from reality, but unreality of the world.

I have long been of the Opinion, says he, that the Fire was a vast Blessing and the Plague likewise; it gave us Occasion to understand the Secrets of Nature which otherwise might have overwhelm’d...

Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.

Perhaps one. Short–term decisions tend to fail in the long–term.

The more rational we are, the more emotional we can be.

I decided that life rationally considered seemed pointless and futile, but it is still interesting in a variety of ways, including the study of science. So why not carry on, following the path of scientific...

I do care. That’s why I hunt them. But if you’ve seen what I have, then you learn to deal with the murders and disappearances. You learn to push it aside and move on. The...

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...