#irrational

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

All men are, at times, influenced by inexplicable sentiments. Ideas haunt them in spite of all their efforts to discard them. Prepossessions are entertained, for which their reason is unable to discover any adequate cause. The strength of a belief, when it is destitute of any rational foundation, seems, of itself, to furnish a new ground for credulity. We first admit a powerful persuasion, and then, from reflecting on the insufficiency of the ground on which it is built, instead of being prompted to dismiss it, we become more forcibly attached to it. ↗

— Charles Brockden Brown

#obsession #perversity #men

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

It is the mission of the twentieth century to elucidate the irrational. ↗

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty

#elucidate #irrational #mission #twentieth #twentieth century

Behind every flinch is a fear or an anxiety - sometimes rational, sometimes not. Without the fear, there is no flinch. But wiping out the fear isn't what's important - facing it is. ↗

— Julien Smith

#anxiety #courage #courageous #facing-fear #fear

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke - Aye! and what then? ↗

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#flower #irrational #romanticism #dreams

Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible. ↗

— Stanisław Lem

#irrationality #religion #faith

I see no reason to have my shirts ironed. It's irrational. ↗

— Barry Commoner

#i see #irrational #no reason #reason #see

Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood? ↗

— Judith Viorst

#cost #does #foolish #how #irrational