Think Rationally Quotes & Sayings

Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We have imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something that is not immediately present, and that, when we first conceive it, has no objective existence. The imagination is the faculty that produces religion and mythology. — Karen Armstrong

I have huge admiration for people who think like the effective altruist, who try to rationally think about how they can change the world for the better, and who try not to be swayed by irrational considerations, such as skin color or whether or not someone lives in the same neighborhood. — Paul Bloom

we're going to react the way we react to things that happen to us - but that doesn't mean we have to surrender to our instincts and give up the hope that we can think and behave more rationally and humanely. There's a reason why we no longer take pleasure throwing live cats into open fires, as both kings and peasants once did. Our culture has trained us to think this is abhorrent. That's promising. — Rick Shenkman

Education should enable a student to think rationally, critically, and ultimately to understand, accept, and adapt with new and old ideas. — Debasish Mridha

I'm afraid of heights. Not unreasonably, but rationally afraid of heights. I think everyone is. — Joe Rogan

No, see what I'm trying to say is that I watch people organizing themselves into these neat little conflicts: Atheists versus Christians Jews versus Muslims Fundamentalists versus basically everybody and I feel like a kid in a broken home who can't get Mom and Dad to stop fighting. The assumption that every one of these groups is making - and I think it's important to acknowledge that every group, from scientist to Sikh, assumes this - is that they are right. That they are somehow behaving rationally. But the fact that we can get so angry about this stuff means that it's not rational and I think we could get a hell of a lot further by synthesizing these beliefs than by finding more and more nuanced ways to call each other dicks. — Cory O'Brien

*cums* *begins to think rationally* — Unknown

The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally. — Steven Pinker

Because, we have blood cravings! The upside to the little Witch slash Vampyre blashphemy is that you don't crave blood as much as we do, you have the bloody strength to fight it and think rationally!" I felt my eyes widen on their own, I could hear a thick British accent starting to seep out that was never there before, he must've learned to hide it well. — L.D. Hutchinson

Knowing about the neurobiological and evolutionary basis for social behavior can soften the arrogance and self-righteousness that often attends discussions of morality. It may help us all to think a little more carefully and rationally. — Patricia Churchland

It doesn't have the ability to think rationally this economic model. It thinks like a drug addict: 'Where can I get my next fix?' It doesn't learn wisely. Any kind of measure of natural wisdom would be: you make a mistake, you correct it the next time around. But a drug addict feels terrible ... and then says: 'I want more'. Unfortunately we have an economic model that thinks like a crack addict. — Naomi Klein

When you're angry, you can't fight rationally. Your body chemistry is all messed up. Your energy goes to all the wrong places. You can't do anything well except get angrier. That's why I like fighting guys who are pumped up on steroids. Fighting is all about relaxing and releasing tension, so your body is flexible and fluid, able to bend and flex quickly, like water. I like fighting angry guys who are really tense. They can't think right, and they can't fight right. — Frank Shamrock

Education gives you the power to think rationally, think better, and be productive in every act. — Debasish Mridha

I don't think if we had been able to make that choice rationally, we would have said that's what we want to do. We would have said: "Can't we save the banks and solve our health care problems?" The answer is yes. You could have. — Joseph Stiglitz

This is not written for the young or the light of heart, not for the tranquil species of men whose souls are content with the simple pleasures of family, church, or profession. Rather, I write to those beings like myself whose existence is compounded by a lurid intermingling of the dark and the
light; who can judge rationally and think with reason, yet who feel too keenly and churn with too great a passion; who have an incessant longing for happiness and yet are
shadowed by a deep and persistent melancholy - those who grasp gratification where they may, but find no lasting comfort for the soul. — B.E. Scully

Fear is a normal human emotion. It is not in itself a killer. We can learn to be aware when fear grips us, and can train to operate through and in spite of our fear. If, on the other hand, we don't understand that fear is normal and has to be controlled and overcome, it will paralyze us and stop us in our tracks. We will no longer think clearly or analyze rationally. We prepare for it and control it; we never let it control us. It if does, we cannot lead. — Colin Powell

These girls with old gents don't do it despite the age - they're drawn to the age, they do it for the age. Why? In Consuela's case, because the vast difference in age gives her permission to submit, I think. My age and my
status give her, rationally, the license to surrender, and surrendering in bed is a not unpleasant sensation. But simultaneously, to give yourself over intimately to a much, much older man provides this sort of younger woman with authority of a kind she cannot get in a sexual arrangement with a younger man. She gets both the pleasures of submission and the pleasures of mastery. — Philip Roth

Someone engulfed by fury cannot think rationally. — Aishah Madadiy

Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth ... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, [ethics] is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves ... Nevertheless, ... such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, and any deeper meaning is illusory ... — Michael Ruse

The hardest time to say something that turns another back to the Lord is during an argument. We get heated and easily tempted to say something we don't mean. Perhaps in our anger for the moment we mean what we say. But when we start thinking more rationally, we realize that's not our heart at all. So we end up regretting our words. In this example we see that the words start with the heart. We need to learn to back down and cool off a minute. If we aren't meditating on the Lord, in our anger we will let something slip. It's good to remember to cool off and spend some time with God. Think about the situation, then go back and speak when your heart is sober. — Adam Houge

Since we built such sophisticated business machines, people tended to think of IBM as a model of order and logic - a totally streamlined organization in which we developed plans rationally and carried them out with utter precision. I never thought for a minute that was really the case. — Thomas J. Watson

We'd like to bury the idea that there's a right way and a wrong way, a smart way and a foolish way, a red way and a blue way. The modern world demands that we all think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally; that we think from a different angle, with a different set of muscles, with a different set of expectations; that we think with neither fear nor favor, with neither blind optimism nor sour skepticism. That we think like - ahem - a Freak. — Steven D. Levitt

So sue me, a girl could only think so rationally after a text like that. — Dahlia Adler

I have a reverence for medicine because I hero-worshiped my father [a former doctor], and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't study, empiricize or think rationally myself - but I admire it in others. — Hugh Laurie

Indeed, the very premise of extrinsic incentives is that we'll always respond rationally to them. But even most economists don't believe that anymore. Sometimes these motivators work. Often they don't. And many times, they inflict collateral damage. In short, the new way economists think about what we do is hard to reconcile with Motivation 2.0. — Daniel H. Pink

Physical brains are subject to the laws of physics; mental states are subject to the laws of logic. Those who think mental states are entirely physical hold a logically contradictory position. In order to think rationally about their thoughts , they must have the freedom to do so, but this freedom is unavailable if the laws of physics and chemistry are controlling their thoughts. — J. Warner Wallace

I think about the trends at the moment in the planet and how it looks for my grandchildren. I don't panic over it, even though rationally maybe I should. I have faith that these terrible trends will change, and they will not go to their logical conclusions of climate change, militarism, pollution, overpopulation. — Robert Thurman

The sentiment indicators that we will examine later prove that market participants herd. By definition, herding means that the emotional part of the brain, the limbic system, is in charge. Remember, this is the same part of the brain that controls fighting and the emotion of love. Do you ever think rationally when it comes to fighting or love? Similarly, the neocortex (rational thought) is subservient in financial speculation. Therefore, the study of sentiment indicators, or the study of crowds, is more important than the study of economic indicators, if you wish to make money trading. The — Jamie Saettele

Humanism is a philosophy that is primarily focused on how we as individuals can be good human beings. We seek to be ethical, moral and compassionate people in all that we do. However, we also understand that good moral reasoning requires us to think clearly and rationally about the problems we face. So Humanists are as much concerned with how we think, as we are concerned with what we think about. To that end we practice the related skills of freethought, critical thinking and logic. — Jennifer Hancock

I never think of things rationally or intellectually. I swear, every single decision I make is just instinct and my instincts tend to be accurate. — Neill Blomkamp

I am not particularly religious. But I think we do face the question of where God is, why we are created and where does life go, why we exist. That sort of thing. And it is very hard to talk about it these days, because it cannot be proven. It is hard to discuss it rationally. — Ang Lee

Later, in the afternoon, I read what I did that morning. It's almost always a surprise. But I can read it rationally; edit, polish, re-write, and think what I might do tomorrow in the early darkness. — Jeff Lindsay

Overachievers don't think reasonably, sensibly, or rationally. — John Eliot

People who are told that they have performed poorly on a test of social intelligence think extra hard to find reasons to discount the test; people who are asked to read a study showing that one of their habits - such as drinking coffee - is unhealthy think extra hard to find flaws in the study, flaws that people who don't drink coffee don't notice. Over and over again, studies show that people set out on a cognitive mission to bring back reasons to support their preferred belief or action. And because we are usually successful in this mission, we end up with the illusion of objectivity. We really believe that our position is rationally and objectively justified. — Jonathan Haidt

I'm not sure why Setne didn't just magic himself away. I suppose even a powerful magician can succumb to panic. When you're free-falling, you forget to think rationally: Gee, I have spells and stuff. Instead your animal brain takes over and you think: OH MY GOD THIS KID IS HOLDING ON TO ME AND I'M TRAPPED AND FALLING AND I'M GOING TO DIE! — Rick Riordan

Chances are, if we can't laugh at something, we can't think rationally about it. — Clay A. Johnson

In daily life, reality gives us material incentives to restrain our irrationality. But what incentive do we have to think rationally about politics? — Bryan Caplan

Some people think emotionally more often than they think politically. Some think politically more often than they think rationally. Others never think rationally about anything at all.
No judgment implied. Just an observation. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

No, she did not want to go to hospital. Yes, she would like a cup of tea. Only then did she begin to think rationally again. — Stieg Larsson

The first effect of emancipation from the Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their minds to every sort of antique nonsense — Bertrand Russell

Love is like this amazing, all-consuming force that sneaks up on you and steals all those brain cells that make you think rationally and replaces them with emotions so powerful that you're impotent to change their course. — Melissa Foster

Most writers I know move back and forth between the rational and the intuitive, though there are some who approach writing very rationally, and others who claim not to think their work through. — Peter Turchi

Get the heat and emotion out worry, and put cold, ruthless scrutiny onto the problem, and worry loses its power. When we are worried and filled with apprehension, we become panicky and are likely to see only gloom and failure. There isn't any situation so bad that it won't become a lot better when you think rationally - and spiritually - about it. God gives you the ability to think rationally about things by filling you with peace and faith. — Norman Vincent Peale

When we are blinded by our frustration and devastation we become oblivious to the life preserver floating inches away from us. If we take a minute to think positive, utilize our faith, and become proactive, we are able to think rationally and clearly. We then will recognize the life preserver which will keep us afloat and help us get to our destination. — Lindsey Rietzsch

I am caught in a terrific bind of characterologically and rationally needing to think in the most comprehensive terms possible, forming a continuous system of argument with a gradient that runs from concrete to abstract, and unfortunately being caught also in a culture in which hardly anyone seems capable of applying himself to understand such a demanding form of argumentation. — Kenny Smith

But courage in fighting is by no means the only form, nor perhaps even the most important. There is courage in facing poverty, courage in facing derision, courage in facing the hostility of one's own herd. In these, the bravest soldiers are often lamentably deficient. And above all there is the courage to think calmly and rationally in the face of danger, and to control the impulse of panic fear or panic rage. — Bertrand Russell