#irrational

We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#fanatic #irrationality #secularism #love

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. ↗

— Scott Adams

#behind #better #defines #humans #irrational

Violence and irrationality were so long and thoroughly cultivated among the Irish, and so perfectly ingrained into their nature, that modern civilization has as yet been unable to extract the virus. ↗

— Thomas Mellon

#been #civilization #cultivated #extract #ingrained

Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely. ↗

— Iain Pears

#cloud-cuckoo-land #desires #dreams #futility #imagination

Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#bring #dismiss #effective #enabled #faculty

I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things? ↗

— Philip Zimbardo

#alien #been #dumb #evil #good

When I was old enough to realize all meat was killed, I saw it as an irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and mutilate it. It was like the way bullies would take control of younger kids in the schoolyard. ↗

— River Phoenix

#control #enough #i #irrational #kids

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. ↗

— Michael Scheuer

#activities #bin #care #does #enemy

I think anybody who has been abused as a kid - and I was abused as a kid, by various people - will say it's irrational because violence is irrational. ↗

— Samantha Morton

#because #been #i #i think #irrational

Interestingly, human irrationality is a hot topic in economics at the moment. Behavioural economics it's called, on the cusp of economics and psychology. ↗

— Evan Davis

#called #cusp #economics #hot #human