"Irrationality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yielded himself to that perverse frenzy which impels a man to acts and utterances most wildly at conflict with reason. His sense of the monstrous irrationality to which he was committed completed what was begun in him by the ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the consciousness, without direct immediate participation of the "ego" of the subject. Moreover, the personal consciousness in general appears quite incapable of rejecting the suggestion, even when the "ego" detects its irrationality. Since the suggestion enters the mind without the active aid of the "ego," it remains outside the borders of the personal consciousness. All further effects of the suggestion, therefore, take place without the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... late years with some writers to question or rather deny it. According to them, if I understand them aright, the savage acts first and invents his reasons, generally very absurd reasons, for so doing afterwards. Significantly enough, the writers who argue in favour of the essential irrationality of savage conduct have none of them, I believe, any personal acquaintance with savages. Their conclusions are based not on observation but on purely theoretical deductions, a most precarious foundation on which to erect a science of man or indeed of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... faith and common sense. The natural conclusion from God's mercy, which he acknowledges, would have been trust and obedience. 'Therefore I can escape,' not 'but I cannot escape,' would have been the logic of faith. The latter is the irrationality of fear. When a man who has been cleaving to this fleeting life of earthly good wakes up to believe his danger, he is ever apt to plunge into an abyss of terror, in which God's commands seem impossible, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren |
