Irrational Quotes

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

I am bundle of nerves riddled with irrational fears.

It's the irrational things that interest me.

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

What lingers from the parent's individual past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes part of her or his irrational parenting.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

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?

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.

Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.

There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape.

You're an actor, are you? Well, all that means is: you are irresponsible, irrational, romantic, and incapable of handling an adult emotion or a universal concept without first reducing it to something personal, material, sensational - and probably sexual!

For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd.

To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom.

You could argue that war is always an irrational act, and yet many states enter into military conflict out of rational calculation or national interest or the stability or longevity of their regime.

Symptoms, those you believe you recognize, seem to you irrational because you take them in an isolated manner, and you want to interpret them directly.

I have irrational fears, and they all go back to losing my father as a kid. I've never gotten over it.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.

Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.

You must strive to multiply bread so that it suffices for the tables of mankind, and not rather favor an artificial control of birth, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.

It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.

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.

The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.

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.

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression 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.

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.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

Distortions control my self-image, like they do for a lot of us. It's irrational.