Instrumental Rationality Quotes

We are condemned to be modern. We can't escape the facts of our history or of living in an age dominated by instrumental rationality, even as we look for ways out of it ... But it has become our historic responsibility to acknowledge the continuing importance of myth, at a level beyond science, in realizing a more organic, holistic relation to the world. A future social ecology would transcend both anti-Enlightenment reaction and [a] reified Enlightenment counter-reaction, which remain only fragmented polarities within bourgeois modernity. ~ David Watson

All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad. ~ Herman Melville

-the half-grasped but never spoken idea that maybe, when you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there is no such thing as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery. And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (Rarely, thank god) you ran into a full-fledged pocket of alien turblence that can buffet an airliner for no reason at all. An attitude or belief which you had never suspected, one so peculiar (at least to you) that it seamed nearly psychotic. ~ Stephen King

I probably listen to more instrumental music than music with lyrics, but at the same time I do love both. ~ Flume

The voices of cold reason were talking, as usual, to deaf ears. ~ Ellis Peters

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. ~ Leo Ornstein

People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up. ~ Simon Blackburn

I want to be, if I can, as sure of the world
the real world
around me as is possible. Now, you can only attain that to a certain degree, but I want the greatest degree of control. I've never involved myself in narcotics of any kind, I don't smoke, and I don't drink because that can easily just fuzz the edges of my rationality
fuzz the edges of my reasoning powers
and I want to be as aware as I possibly can. That means giving up a lot of fantasies that might be comforting in some ways, but I'm willing to give that up in order to live in an actually real world, or as close as I can get to it. ~ James Randi

They are very good odds. And I know that my scientific brain believes them, if not my panic-ridden, maternal one. Those odds should have made a difference to my reaction. I should have been able to take the diagnosis calmly, intelligently, reflectively. But that would be to assign rationality to this phenomenon. The trouble with abject fear - with searing, lurid metaphor - is that it is not rational. And the myths that spring out of fear that deep are certainly not. They are the stuff of nightmares. They are tenacious. ~ Alanna Mitchell

All humanity needs, is to be reminded that there has always existed a human consensus on all common human needs and desires (extremely long life in perfect health, abundance, well-being), and that now, transgressing the religious option, he has achieved the scientific option of working for all of them, and for much more.
His rationality, guided by both his ambition and inspiration, will do the rest.

WHATEVER RELIGION PROMISES, SCIENCE WILL DELIVER. ~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

The problem with us EU politicians is that we approach everything with cool rationality, and then wonder why we don't win people over emotionally. ~ Martin Schulz

The cultural forces that help politically sustain both the militaristic and the corporate function of the Deep State, however, are growing more irrational and antiscience. A military tradition that glories in force and appeals to self-sacrifice is the polar opposite of the Enlightenment heritate of rationality, the search for peace, and a belief in the common destiny of mankind. The warrior-leader, like the witch doctor, ultimately appeals to irrational emotionalism; and the cultural psychology that produces the bravest and most loyal warriors is a mind-set that is usually hostile to the sort of free inquiry of which scientific progress depends. This dynamic is observable in Afghanistan: no outside power has been able to conquer and pacify that society for millennia because of the tenacity of its warrior spirit; yet the country has one of the highest illiteracy rates on earth and is barely out of the Bronze Age in social development. p 260 ~ Mike Lofgren

I have a theatrical temperament. I'm not interested in the middle road - maybe because everyone's on it. Rationality, reasonableness bewilder me. ~ Joan Didion

To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

The world is too much for us. Rationality as we have come to know it works by ignoring most of experience: laws are arrived at by selective abstraction. ~ Tom Cheetham

The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, ~ Robert M. Pirsig

I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time. ~ Carlos Santana

That's always attractive to me, to work with music whose form is a big question mark. Even many of my favorite bands growing up, when I was just a kid learning to play drums and guitar and everything, were bands like Pink Floyd, where the arrangement, the number of bars in each section is unconventional and often lopsided, and there will be small little instrumental interludes and that sort of thing. So those odd forms, as well as dark content, are the things that I think are continuous through all the type of projects that I've been attracted to. ~ Charlie Clouser

I thought they'd fact-check it, and it'd make them look worse. I mean that's how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it's false, then they look like idiots. But Trump supporters - they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything! Now he's in the White House. Looking back, instead of hurting the campaign, I think I helped it. And that feels [bad]. ~ Paul Horner

We don't see very far in the future, we are very focused on one idea at a time, one problem at a time, and all these are incompatible with rationality as economic theory assumes it. ~ Daniel Kahneman

What AI could do is essentially be a power tool that magnifies human intelligence and gives us the ability to move our civilization forward. It might be curing disease, it might be eliminating poverty. Certainly it should include preventing environmental catastrophe. If AI could be instrumental to all those things, then I would feel it was worthwhile. ~ Stuart J. Russell

The man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality, not merely in art, but in all existence. ~ George Santayana

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing. ~ Bertrand Russell

The rationality of our universe is best suggested by the fact that we can discover more about it from any starting point, as if it were a fabric that will unravel from any thread. ~ George Zebrowski

Culture makes lies plausible through exposure to time. It makes prejudice seem like physics intergenerationally. It is therefore the most dangerous opponent of philosophy, because it feels the most credible to the average person. ~ Stefan Molyneux

Scientists are not the paragons of rationality, objectivity, openmindedness and humility that many of them might like others to believe. ~ Marcello Truzzi

In the Hindu religion, one can[not] have freedom of speech. A Hindu must surrender his freedom of speech. He must act according to the Vedas. If the Vedas do not support the actions, instructions must be sought from the Smritis, and if the Smritis fail to provide any such instructions, he must follow in the footsteps of the great men.
He is not supposed to reason. Hence, so long as you are in the Hindu religion, you cannot expect to have freedom of thought ~ B.R. Ambedkar

The true function of logic ... as applied to matters of experience ... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is ~ Bertrand Russell

Who is doing this? Who am I? What is all this? Who is the doer? Who is the nimit (instrumental doer) of this? If all these remain present 'at a time' exactly the way it is, then that is considered shuddha upayog (pure focused applied awareness of the Self, the Soul). ~ Dada Bhagwan

Of all the early breakthrough rock and roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers. ~ Cub Koda

Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

When Lonnie Mack came out with the guitar instrumental "Memphis" I thought, Oh God, finally somebody we guitar players can relate to ! ~ Richard Betts

The term "rational" and its variants (rationality, rationalism) are used in a lot of contexts in economic debate, both positively and negatively, but nearly always sloppily or dishonestly. A specimen I've seen on more occasions than I can count is the line (usually presented with a sense of witty originality) "if you are opposed to economic rationalism, you must be in favor of economic irrationalism" ... I've come to the conclusion that the word "rational" has no meaning that cannot better be conveyed by some alternative term and that the best advice is probably to avoid it altogether. ~ John Quiggin

There is no plan ... You need to make smart choices, But you can make career decisions for two different types of reasons.
You can do something for instrumental reasons
because you think it's going to lead to something else, regardless of whether you enjoy it or it's worthwhile ... or you can do something for fundamental reasons
because you think it's inherently valuable, regardless of what it may or may not lead to.
The dirty little secret is that insturmental reasons usually don't work. Things are too complicated, too unpredictable. You never know what' going to happen. So you end up stuck. The most successful people
not all of the time, but most of the time
make decisions for fundamental reasons.
They take a job or join a company because it will let them do interesting work in a cool place
even if they don't know exactly where it will lead. They're not fools. They're enlightened pragmatists. ~ Daniel H. Pink

But it was important to be rational at all times, not just when calm. ~ Brandon Sanderson

This organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason. ~ Herbert Marcuse

You look back, and it was important to bring back instrumental music, and it was great to be a part of that wave of instrumental rock music. And clearly it was something I was destined to do. ~ Stuart Hamm

It all adds up to normality. ~ Greg Egan

In addition to the clean coal provisions, the energy conference agreement contains provisions instrumental in helping increase conservation and lowering consumption. ~ Jerry Costello