Irrational Quotes

Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit. (Bill Cosby)
Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. View quote
Louis Brandeis
What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts. View quote
Thomas Henry Huxley
Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion. View quote
Scott Adams
Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness. View quote
George Jean Nathan
Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. View quote
T. E. Lawrence
If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason. View quote
Emil Cioran
Reason ... contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order - for "rational” is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression. View quote
Herbert Marcuse
When we approach history, we are dealing with a conglomeration of irrational continua. Those who deal with history by nonrational processes are the ones who make history, the actors in it. View quote
Carroll Quigley
Religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves. (John Locke)
I have no phobias. Phobias are irrational. My fears are rational and CAREFULLY CULTIVATED, like roses. View quote
Maureen Johnson
There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational. View quote
Albert Ellis
If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesnt get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational. View quote
Lars Peter Hansen
Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational. View quote
Hugh Mackay
By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There's no specific line, as you know. View quote
Leo Ornstein
You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do. View quote
Ron Silver
Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language. View quote
Robert A. Heinlein
Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight altruism? These are only consequences, effects, not causes. I am out after the real cause, the real root of evil on earth the irrational. View quote
Ayn Rand
Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds. View quote
Thomas Hardy
Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past. (Theodor Adorno)
The suppression of liberty is always likely to be irrational. View quote
John Rawls
To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable. View quote
Epictetus
These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Bin Laden does reprehensible activities, and we should surely take care of that by killing him as soon as we can. But he's not an irrational man. He's a very worthy enemy. He's an enemy to worry about. View quote
Michael Scheuer