Irrationally Quotes & Sayings

When you are irrationally irrational you may find that life is magical. — Debasish Mridha

She didn't want to admit, even to herself, just how much the aging of her face really did genuinely depress her. She wanted to be above such superficial concerns. She wanted to be depressed about the state of the world, not the crumpling and creasing of her skin. Each time she saw evidence of the natural aging of her body, she felt irrationally ashamed, as if she weren't trying hard enough. — Liane Moriarty

If it were evenly distributed," said Rodman, "the example of justice in the world might lead at last to a sane world policy. As it is, there is world despair and fury over the selfish fortune of a few, and all behave irrationally in revenge. — Isaac Asimov

Now for God's sake, will you two start behaving like a princess and a Courier?" Halt told them. "If you don't, I'll have to think about sending Will home.'
'Me?' Will said, his voice breaking into a high-pitched squeak of indignation. 'What's it got to do with me?'
'It's all your fault!' Halt shouted irrationally. — John Flanagan

There may be occasions when it is best to behave irrationally, but whether there are should be decided rationally. — I. J. Good

I act irrationally, I defy the odds, I engage when others would run. I look for trouble, I seek chaos, it is a burden. — Rosie O'Donnell

Don't be upset. Don't listen to me. I only meant that I am jealous of a dark, unconscious element, something irrational, unfathomable. I am jealous of your toilet articles, of the drops of sweat on your skin, of the germs in the air you breathe which could get into your blood and poison you. And I am jealous of Komarovsky, as if he were an infectious disease. Someday he will take you away, just as certainly as death will someday separate us. I know this must seem obscure and confused, but I can't say it more clearly. I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely. — Boris Pasternak

Rationally I have no hope, irrationally I believe in miracles. — Joni Mitchell

Getting control of stuff makes people feel like they have more control over their lives - maybe irrationally, but it's one of these psychological truths. — Gretchen Rubin

No one actually needs another person or another person's love to survive. Love is when we have irrationally convinced ourselves that we do. — Gabrielle Zevin

Because as far as she was concerned, there was no in-between: She wanted all or nothing, illogically, irrationally, even though something inside her knew that nothing would be too hard, and all was impossible. — Jennifer E. Smith

We all do that to ourselves. Explain irrationally the rational. We make up stories in our heads instead of looking at the facts. We force persecution on ourselves when there is none. — Kunal Nayyar

The possibility that stock value in aggregate can become irrationally high is contrary to the hard-form "efficient market" theory that many of you once learned as gospel from your mistaken professors of yore. Your mistaken professors were too much influenced by "rational man" models of human behavior from economics and too little by "foolish man" models from psychology and real-world experience. — Charlie Munger

How crazy craziness makes everyone, how irrationally afraid. The madness hidden in each of us, called to, identified, aroused like a lust. And against that the jaw sets. The more I fear my own insanity the more I must punish yours ... — Kate Millett

The death of God represents not only the realization that gods have never existed, but the contention that such a belief is no longer even irrationally possible: that neither reason nor the taste and temper of the times condones it. The belief lingers on, of course, but it does so like astrology or a faith in a flat earth. — William H Gass

Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her. — Urie Bronfenbrenner

This proletarianization of the lower salaried bourgeoisie is accompanied by an excess in the opposite direction: the irrationally high pay of top managers and bankers, a level of remuneration that is economically irrational since, as investigations in the US have demonstrated, it tends to be inversely proportional to the company's success. — Slavoj Zizek

This no-land was exactly the place in which my self was pushed and started to float without points of reference, and at the same time to resist the forced choice of only one identity and the erosion of my plural cultural belonging. More then ever before, certainly more than at any other time of my geographical and cultural dislocation due to the experience of migration, I was convinced of the necessity to reinforce my pertinence not to the single reality, but to a multiplicity of spaces. As never before, I kept remembering irrationally the shape of my country still entire and unbroken, without the scars of the new borders drawn on a mainly historically incorrect 'ethnic basis'. My imagined country was visible only from the window of a plane flying over the Balkans, as only from the air are the new states' borders and walls of ethnic separation invisible. In my stubborn conviction I was keeping all the scattered pieces together as a mental map of my non-existent homeland. — Melita Richter Malabotta

There are times in relationships, when we blow it. In spite of our best intentions, we wrong others. Our jealousy makes us feel inferior. Our own wounds cause us to act irrationally. Our insecurities lead us to say hurtful things.
And so, we find ourselves acting out. In short, we cloud our lives with muddy water. We trash around the pond of our emotions until things are just too messed up to figure out how to fix them.
It is in the times of muddy water that we learn how to wait it out. We have to wait until the mud settles. We must wait until we can clearly see where the water of our lives ends and the mud of misplaced emotions begin.
Have the patience to wait until the mud settles. Be still until the water is clear. In clear water, words come. Right actions reveal them selves and healing appears.
From the Devotional A Word in Season — Stella Payton

I had to overcome many things, many people telling me no. If you want it, and you believe in it, you have to do it. And I know it's silly, and I know I'm kind of irrationally optimistic, but you have to be and you can't really have another plan, because you're going to fall back on it. — Crystal Reed

You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they're not living, breathing people any more.
It's not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places, and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead.
It's just something you learn to accommodate.
Like adapting around a hole. I don't know. It's like you become ... a doughnut instead of a bun — Jojo Moyes

Nuclear power must be dealt with irrationally ... Nuclear plants are carcinogens. Let's get that story out ... Their lies will catch up to them. We need endless Chernobyl reminders. — Ralph Nader

I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of privileged despair. — Kenneth Tynan

Bruce Wayne's childhood experience of losing his parents during a random back-alley mugging remains the primary origin story for the Batman character, but other than irrationally (or, more accurately: insanely) motivating his desire to fight crime, the trauma seems to have had little discernable effect on his character. — Dan Hassler-Forest

One of the many difficult things about women was that they tended to pick the most unsuitable times to tell you something they considered to be important, and then became irrationally upset when you failed to remember it. — Ruth Downie

People expect black women to be angry, irrationally so, without reason. They think we are animals and we go around like the Wild Things. — Claudia Rankine

No man but Emerson would have considered walking across the fields in full evening kit, much less expect me to trail my red satin skirts and lace ruffles through the dirt; but Emerson is unique. When he behaves irrationally it is necessary to be firm with him. He — Elizabeth Peters

Many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new. — Nir Eyal

Flowers make me irrationally happy. — Alexa Von Tobel

Power doesn't corrupt. It's neutral. Someone always wants to corrupt power. It's the way a shotgun is not a deadly weapon until someone chooses to use it irrationally. — Steve Ditko

Irrationally, Mosca felt she should have inherited her father's intimate knowledge of Mandelion. His throwaway comments about the city should have magically meshed in her mind, giving her a faultless instinct for finding her way around. — Frances Hardinge

Initial or mutual trust (the type of trust that makes us, irrationally, trust strangers) then enabled the complex planning that allowed man to transition from a tribe of hunter-gatherers whose fate depended on external factors to an agricultural society where complex, planned outcomes could be put into motion. — David Amerland

I began to study marijuana in 1967 ... I had not yet learned that there is something very special about illicit drugs. If they don't always make the drug user behave irrationally, they certainly cause many non-users to behave that way. — Lester Grinspoon

Great creativity is astonishingly, absurdly, rationally, irrationally powerful. — Andy Hobsbawm

In utopia, rule by masterminds is both necessary and necessarily primitive, for it excludes so much that is known to man and about man. The mastermind is driven by his own boundless conceit and delusional aspirations, which he self-identifies as a noble calling. He alone is uniquely qualified to carry out this mission. He is, in his own mind, a savior of mankind, if only man will bend to his own will. Such can be the addiction of power. It can be an irrationally egoistic and absurdly frivolous passion that engulfs even sensible people. In this, mastermind suffers from a psychosis of sorts and endeavors to substitute his own ambitions for the individual ambitions of millions of people. — Mark R. Levin

Evidentialism, the view that holds that a belief is rationally justified or acceptable only if it is held on the basis of good evidence, has been rejected by many in the field of epistemology, in which such questions are probed deeply, and this rejection is for good reasons. The fact is that for all our talk about evidence, most of us would have a difficult time producing evidence for many of the things we believe and take for granted. We have neither the time nor the resources to track down such evidence, so we simply accept most of our beliefs on the word of others or because we heard them in news reports or documentaries, read them in books, or received them from other sources of information. Are we acting irrationally for holding beliefs in this way? It hardly seems so. — Paul Chamberlain

He was never able to explain what the cutting did for him in a way he'd understand: how it was a form of punishment and also of cleansing, how if allowed him to drain everything toxic and spoiled from himself, how it kept him from being irrationally angry at others, at everyone, how it kept him from shouting, from violence, how it made him feel like his body, his life, was truly his and no one else's. — Hanya Yanagihara

Love makes people irrational, so write irrationally great characters in love. — Erik Christian

What do you call an electorate that seems prone to acting out irrationally, is full of inchoate rage, and is constantly throwing fits and tantrums? You call it teenaged. — Graydon Carter

Integration proceeds by just the opposite route: a deliberate heightening of every organic function; a release of impulses from circumstances that irrationally thwarted them; richer and more complex patterns of activity; an esthetic heightening of anticipated realizations; a steady lengthening of the future; a faith in cosmic perspectives. — Lewis Mumford

Faith is one of those words that connotes, however irrationally, some kind of virtue in itself. — Louis J. Halle

Faith is irrational, which is why those who exercise it are rewarded irrationally. — Matshona Dhliwayo

And as we kissed, really kissed, something inside me was smashed, like a splitting atom, erupting with all the force of a shattering nucleus. And yet I was strangely at peace, too. It was like I'd found my place in the universe, in the chaos, and Lucius and I could go along locked together throughout time without end, like pi, existing infinitely, irrationally, spinning through time. — Beth Fantaskey

You're not messing about in Iain's garden, are you?" I felt irrationally guilty. "I just pulled a few weeds." "I warned her," Vivien said, in self-defense, "but she didn't listen." "Well," Geoff gave me a faintly pitying look, "what's done is done. We'll make sure you have a proper funeral, at any rate. — Susanna Kearsley

Of many magics, one is watching a beloved sleep: free of eyes and awareness, you for a sweet moment hold the heart of him; helpless, he is then all, and however irrationally, you have trusted him to be, man-pure, child-tender. — Truman Capote

I was always one of these people who is irrationally moved by stupid pop songs. — Will Sheff

When you make people angry, they act in accordance with their baser instincts, often violently and irrationally. When you inspire people, they act in accordance with their higher instincts, sensibly and rationally. Also, anger is transient, whereas inspiration sometimes has a life-long effect. — Peace Pilgrim

The logic of nuclear deterrence gets more and more convoluted the deeper one goes into it. It is assumed, for instance, that the leaders of Russia, in contemplating an attack on the UK, would be sufficiently sane and rational as to weigh up the consequences of a possible retaliatory nuclear strike from the UK and decide on that basis to refrain from attacking. On the other hand, it is assumed that those same leaders would base their sane and rational decision on the likelihood of their counterparts in the UK acting so insanely and irrationally as to be willing to launch nuclear weapons against Russia that would almost certainly bring about their own total self-destruction. — Timmon Milne Wallis

In our wide world there is but one altogether fatal personage, the dunce,
he that speaks irrationally, that sees not, and yet thinks he sees. — Thomas Carlyle

I never seemed to like the spring for what it was; I always loved it for what it might have been. In the head. In the heart of hearts. It is in my ability, I think, to love something fully only if I am naturally, compulsively, irrationally drawn to it. — Anne Sexton

The great scientist dares to differ from accepted 'facts' - think irrationally - let the artist do likewise. — Edward Weston

Over the years I'd learned absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. The heart becomes wary, somnolent and cynical during periods of prolonged absence, burdened with cares and fears borne in solitude. However, absence does make the body greedy and irrationally amorous with frustrated need. — Penny Reid

Orwell was the sort of man who was full of grievances. He was very loyal. Once he got to know you, he was extremely loyal. He hated passionately and irrationally. — George Woodcock

Arrogant S.O.B.s run the world. A performer can never have too much self-confidence. The best in every field are likely to strike most people as irrationally confident, but that's how they got to the top. — John Eliot

In principle, junk bonds are basically useful, but they are used excessively and irrationally, notably in takeovers. — Maurice Allais

If you can create a weapon that causes enough fear the fear itself can cause damage that's as paralyzing and destructive as any physical device like a bomb or a laser gun. Fear can make decent people behave irrationally and violently. — Patricia Cornwell

I'm interested in pitches that have compelling people and ideas at the core - and a good news peg certainly doesn't hurt. We look for stories that are solutions-oriented, but not irrationally upbeat, from writers with a strong voice. For LadyJournos, where I'm curating not editing. — Ann Friedman

No woman had ever made his wolf pace restlessly. No woman had ever made him feel an inexplicable desire to behave irrationally, all for the sake of making her smile. No woman had ever made him want to be a better man, one who would spill blood to protect what he loved. No woman had ever incited the hunter in him. No woman had ever denied him. Except one. — Dannika Dark

The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors. — Thomas Henry Huxley

Absurdly, irrationally, she believed that music could make a difference to the temper of the world.She did not investigate this belief, test it to see whether it made sense;she simply believed it, and so she chose music that expressed order and healing:Bach for order, Mozart for healing. — Alexander McCall Smith

Page 117 Sam says "You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they're not living, breathing people anymore. It's not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you and makes you want to cry in the wrong places and irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It's just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don't know. It's like you become ... a doughnut instead of a bun." page 117 — Jojo Moyes

People always confuse intelligence with rational thinking and skepticism. I think it's a big mistake to assume anyone that follows a cult, religion, political party we don't like, etc is "stupid." But it's fair to say that if you follow something irrational, you are acting irrationally (at least as it pertains to that one specific act.) People can be smart - even brilliant - without necessarily being rational. Sometimes it's easy for people to be skeptical to most things, but with one or two glaring blind spots. If you don't spend a good portion of time playing devil's advocate with your own dearly held beliefs, odds are that there will be at least a couple of them that are irrational, even if you're one of the smartest people around. — Jon Moore

Clearly, we have entered a world very different from the world of modernity as previously described. The subject/object distinction has broken down. In this world, foundationalism is a washout;49 the old distinction between fact and opinion is disappearing from view. The quest for certainty, precision, and ahistorical knowledge of objective truth is judged impossible. "Truth" is not an objective entity; the classic dikes between fact and opinion are springing leaks. Of course, not all the tenets of modernity have been sacrificed. Irrationally, philosophical naturalism (for most advocates of this radical hermeneutics), still holds sway; moreover, I must still say something about the place of science in this new model. But some variation of what once held the status of a minority report advanced only by a few intellectuals is now adopted almost everywhere. — D. A. Carson

The fact is, those who are like everyone else arouse no hatred unless there is a reason. But when a resplendent inner self pierces the grossness that envelops it, some, quite irrationally, extend it heartfelt adoration; others, just as irrationally, try heart and soul to insult it. — Rabindranath Tagore

And it's deadly to us. We can inspire lust, but it's just a shadow. An illusion. Love is a dangerous force." He shook his head. "Love killed the dinosaurs, man."
I'm pretty sure a meteor killed the dinosaurs, Thomas."
He shrugged. "There's a theory making the rounds now that when the meteor hit it only killed off the big stuff. That there were plenty of smaller reptiles running around, about the same size as all the mammals at the time. The reptiles should have regained their position eventually, but they didn't, because the mammals could feel love. They could be utterly, even irrationally devoted to their mates and their offspring. It made them more likely to survive. The lizards couldn't do that. The meteor hit gave the mammals their shot, but it was love that turned the tide. — Jim Butcher

To commit to the present moment is to accept our inability to control the future and accept that many of our fears and reactions are just what they are, thoughts and emotions that are irrationally internalized. We will never be completely void of the temptations to look into the future when we are in the present; however, one must come to the understanding that by looking too far off into the future, we taint the future by creating an artificial expectation of what the future should hold, and are emotionally drained when it holds something else. Focus on the present, and you will come to have more control over the future naturally. — Forrest Curran

If there's no ethically correct solution, act irrationally. — Sergei Lukyanenko

If you have a very commanding argument that you cannot refute, not to accept the argument is to act irrationally. — Robert F. Almeder

It's only natural for the girl you're crushing on to be in love with someone else. Since you're in love with her, she sparkles in your eyes. That's why people fall so irrationally in love. — Myself

The unmeasured hopes and fears of middle-class sufferers were often a none-too-subtle kind of transference. They invested the physician with all the attributes of a caring, all-knowing father, almost a manufactured deity, only to be disappointed over and over again. With them, expectations of the physician's omnipotence alternated with contempt for his impotence, and they irrationally idolized or irrationally execrated him. — Peter Gay

I feel ... very protective of you. Irrationally so? Yeah, maybe. But it's just the way it has to be. I promise you, once you realize all I want to give you, you'll like it. Hell you'll love it. This is us, and this is permanent. — L. H. Cosway

The true investor welcomes volatility ... a wildly fluctuating market means that irrationally low prices will periodically be attached to solid businesses. — Warren Buffett

In no other field of scientific endeavor do otherwise intelligent people feel free to make public claims based on prejudice and ignorance. Yet in relation to psychic phenomena, committed materialists feel free to disregard the evidence and behave irrationally and unscientifically, while claiming to speak in the name of science and reason. They abuse the authority of science and bring rationalism into disrepute. — Rupert Sheldrake

Einstein was arguing against quantum theory just as irrationally as his opponents had argued against relativity theory. Einstein remained adamant (he remained adamant to the end of his life where quantum theory was concerned). — Richard Rhodes

In fact, all the additional knowledge gained by an irrationally constituted society may but enlarge and enhance the powers of death and destruction. — Paul A. Baran

Mental illnesses are so strange. A physical problem we can understand. But when the mind works irrationally, well, by its very definition, the rational mind cannot truly relate. — Harlan Coben

All I'm arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive, where there's no taboo against criticizing bad ideas, and where everyone who shows up, in order to get their ideas entertained, has to meet some obvious burdens of intellectual rigor and self-criticism and honesty - and when people fail to do that, we are free to stop listening to them. What religion has had up until this moment is a different set of rules that apply only to it, which is you have to respect my religious certainty even though I'm telling you I arrived at it irrationally. — Sam Harris

Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence". — R.D. Laing

If you have to ask someone to change, to tell you they love you, to bring wine to dinner, to call you when they land, you can't afford to be with them. It's not worth the price, even though, just like the Tiffany catalog, no one tells you what the price is. You set it yourself, and if you're lucky it's reasonable. You have a sense of when you're about to go bankrupt. Your own sense of self-worth takes the wheel and says, Enough of this shit. Stop making excuses. No one's that busy at work. No one's allergic to whipped cream. There are too cell phones in Sweden. But most people don't get lucky. They get human. They get crushes. This means you irrationally mortgage what little logic you own to pay for this one thing. This relationship is an impulse buy, and you'll figure out if it's worth it later. — Sloane Crosley

I saw his eyes close and figured he'd probably be asleep immediately. I felt irrationally envious of him - someone who could just drift off, someone whose thoughts didn't keep him up. Someone like I'd once been. — Anonymous

Irrationally, I think, Will You Marry Me? Four words. I Want a Divorce. Four words. I would like time to count the letters as well, but there is not time. — Suzanne Finnamore

When faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem... your only option is to act swiftly, some might even say irrationally. Removing the most dangerous elements first... and methodically attacking each subsequent challenge in a separate, but deliberate manner. — Jeph Loeb