Irrational Acts Quotes

Existing, period – that is what drives men to irrational acts. ~ Dave Eggers

The equivalent of the moth's light-compass reaction is the apparently irrational but useful habit of falling in love with one, and only one, member of the opposite sex. The misfiring by-product - equivalent to flying into the candle flame - is falling in love with Yahweh (or with the Virgin Mary, or with a wafer, or with Allah) and performing irrational acts motivated by such love. ~ Richard Dawkins

This is a formidable enemy. To dismiss it as a bunch of 'cowards' perpetuating 'senseless acts of violence' is complacent nonsense. People willing to kill thousands of innocents while they kill themselves are not cowards. They are deadly vicious warriors and need to be treated as such. ~ Charles Krauthammer

While originating in acts of imagination, orthodoxies paradoxically seek to control the imagination as a means of maintaining their authority. The authenticity of a person's understanding is measured according to its conformity with the dogmas of the school. While such controls may provide a necessary safeguard against charlatanism and self-deception, they also can be used to suppress authentic attempts at creative innovation that might threaten the status quo. The imagination is anarchic and potentially subversive. The more hierarchic and authoritarian a religious institution, the more it will require that the creations of the imagination conform to its doctrines and aesthetic norms. Yet ~ Stephen Batchelor

For every Gospel action, there is an opposite and devious demonic reaction. We see this in the book of Acts. It appears in church history. We experience it in our personal journeys. ~ Daniel Henderson

No sane person could witness what they saw every day in the field, or carry out the acts of violence they were tasked with, and not come away affected. ~ Ronie Kendig

I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures. ~ Gary Snyder

I am a nobody. ... Treat me as a solar myth, or an echo, or an irrational quantity, or ignore me altogether. ~ Simon Winchester

So when Yudhishthira tells Draupadi that eventually human acts do bear fruit, even though the fruit is invisible,56 one might interpret 'fruit' to mean the building of character through repeated actions. Yudhishthira was certainly aware that repeated actions had a way of changing one's inclinations to act in a certain way. That inclination is character. ~ Gurcharan Das

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. ~ George W. Bush

... Science... denude(s) all religious beliefs... denigrating them as irrational forms of superstition or myth regardless of their intrinsic rationality or value. ~ Nicholas Gane

When somebody who makes movies for a living - either as an actor, writer, producer or director - lives to be a certain age, you have to admire them. It is an act of courage to make a film - a courage for which you are not prepared in the rest of life. It is very hard and very destructive. But we do it because we love it. ~ John Carpenter

One who is content with what he has, and who accepts the fact that he inevitably misses very much in life, is far better off than one who has much more but who worries about all he may be missing . . . the relative perfection which we must attain to in this life if we are to live as sons of God is not the twenty-four-hour-a-day production of perfect acts of virtue, but a life from which practically all the obstacles to God's love have been removed or overcome. One of the chief obstacles to this perfection of selfless charity is the selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything, to be a brilliant success in our own eyes and in the eyes of other men. We can only get rid of this anxiety by being content to miss something in almost everything we do. We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the one thing necessary for us - whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need. Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the "one thing necessary" may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us together with the one thing we needed. ~ Thomas Merton

I know sanctification comes not with any particular calling, but with genuine acts of service, often for which there is no specific calling. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

In mythology, the transformative acts of people who seek self-knowledge by pursuing an epic adventure always seem too activate from some sort of dying to the world. Following this origination formula, I shall enter the unground labyrinth to confront my malevolent self, and wage a battle seeking to annihilate the demonic core of my being. We can only destroy those demons that we take personal ownership of and responsibility for creating. Can I use writing as a sorcerers tool to descend into the crooked lanes of my spiritual labyrinth to confront the warlock of an egotistical self? Can I use writing as an intentional mechanism to attempt undergoing a spiritual purification? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Theological Seminary, points out that the sin of Sodom is mentioned several times elsewhere in the Bible, but never in connection with homosexual acts. ~ Jack Rogers

If the transmigration of a soul takes place into a rational being, it simply becomes the soul of that body. But if the soul migrates into a brute beast, it follows the body outside, as a guardian spirit follows a man. For there could never be a rational soul in an irrational being. ~ Sallust

You must never stop dreaming. Face reality, yes. But don't stop with the way things are; dream of things as they ought to be. Dream of peace. Peace is rational and reasonable. War is irrational in this age and unwinnable. ~ Jesse Jackson

We must do everything we are obliged to do; give without reckoning, practice virtue whenever opportunity offers, constantly overcome ourselves, prove our love by all the little acts of tenderness and consideration we can muster. In a word, we must produce all the good works that lie within our strength - out of love for God. ~ Therese Of Lisieux

Writing is controlled substance. It acts with the least mediation and strongest effect. ~ Sean Wilsey

There are irrational fears. If you see a woman wearing a hijab and fear is your first thought, something's really wrong. ~ Hamza Yusuf

It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none. Some people would agonise over minor slips or mistakes on their part, while others would feel quite unmoved by their own gross acts of betrayal or dishonesty. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Practical jokes are a demonstration that the distinction between seriousness and play is not a law of nature but a social convention which can be broken, and that a man does not always require a serious motive for deceiving another.

Two men, dressed as city employees, block off a busy street and start digging it up. The traffic cop, motorists and pedestrians assume that this familiar scene has a practical explanation – a water main or an electric cable is being repaired – and make no attempt to use the street. In fact, however, the two diggers are private citizens in disguise who have no business there.

All practical jokes are anti-social acts, but this does not necessarily mean that all practical jokes are immoral. A moral practical joke exposes some flaw of society which is hindrance to a real community or brotherhood. That it should be possible for two private individuals to dig up a street without being stopped is a just criticism of the impersonal life of a large city where most people are strangers to each other, not brothers; in a village where all inhabitants know each other personally, the deception would be impossible. ~ W.H. Auden

P33- Oppression is domesticating. Gravest obstacle to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings consciousness. ~ Paulo Freire

As a society we've progressed to a point where it is unacceptable behavior to knock someone down who is acting a fool. I teach my children to use their words when faced with a conflict. That's what civilized people do. All that is fine and good except for one small thing; we've enabled the fools ...
... What if people could expect a measure of instant justice when they were out of order? The acts of thoughtlessness would decline exponentially. If you give people license to be fools then you are left to deal with fools. However, if you put fools on notice then they'll be forced to snap to attention and act right or suffer the consequences. Think of it as an adult spanking. ~ Aaron Blaylock

Sometimes I'm irrational, I know I am, but even irrational thought feels very, very real when you're in the middle of shit. ~ Kim Holden

America is a country born from semi-mythologized blood, glory and acts of selfless patriotic sacrifice. ~ Henry Rollins

Each Warrior wants to leave the mark of his will, his signature, on important acts he touches. This is not the voice of ego but of the human spirit, rising up and declaring that it has something to contribute to the solution of the hardest problems, no matter how vexing! ~ Pat Riley

Better to do nothing than to engage in localized acts whose ultimate function is to make the system run more smoothly. The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. People intervene all the time, "doing something"; academics participate in meaningless "debates," etc.; but the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from it all. Those in power often prefer even "critical" participation or a critical dialogue to silence, since to engage us in such a "dialogue" ensures that our ominous passivity is broken. The "Bartlebian act" I propose is violent precisely insofar as it entails ceasing this obsessive activity-in it, violence and non-violence overlap (non-violence appears as the highest violence), likewise activity and inactivity (the most radical thing is to do nothing). ~ Slavoj Zizek

This praise highlights another problem with the idea of the "good man" - the bar is ultimately a low one, and men are heralded every day for engaging in basic acts of domestic labour like washing dishes. It is this low bar that also renders the experiences I've shared unexceptional and therefore so often unnoticed. Sexist comments, intimidation, groping, violating boundaries, and aggression are seen as merely "typical" for men. But "typical" is dangerously interchangeable with "acceptable." "Boys will be boys," after all. ~ Vivek Shraya

I want Maggie Gyllenhaal. I don't know why. I don't think she necessarily looks like me or acts like me, I just think she's a cool actress and she could play me, so there you go. ~ Diablo Cody

The mind sees, the will commands, the man acts. What is it then to act? To act is to produce something. If you have produced nothing
if no result has been the fruit of your will, you have done nothing. ~ Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

Sixty-two years passed since that battle, I can remember it as if it was yesterday. It made me the king I am now, not with the power of swords, but with the power of words.
Enemies invaded our land like black death until they reached our city. My father, the king, was preparing for the final battle; even women were given swords and asked to fight. It was a battle like no other battle; we fought like Titans not humans, and we crushed our enemies although they outnumbered us.
" The king is wounded ! The king is wounded ! " shouted one of the soldiers . I rushed towards the source of the sound to find my father bleeding on the ground, I tried to take off his armor but he refused and asked me to get closer to him. He squeezed my arm with his old hand and said :

"Don't build your life on illusions,
Don't build your opinion on hypotheses,
Don't build your style on imitation,
Don't build your image on lies,
Don't build your respect on fear,
Don't build your dreams on others' nightmares,
Don't build your friendships on benefits,
Don't build your heroism on foolish acts,
Don't build your kingdom on the backs of the poor,
Don't build your palace on the soft sands of injustice"

Then he looked up to the sky and closed his eyes forever.
He left me a kingdom in ruins, but left me the richest king. ~ Muhammad Nusair

If I, as a child, claim that something awful has happened - that someone has done something terrible to me - and everyone around me acts as if nothing is the matter, then either I must be crazy, or all of them are. And when you're a kid and your life depends on all these people, there is no choice: of course, I must be crazy. ~ E. Sue Blume

And so we're overbrave and overfearful - we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic - and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal - all of us. ~ John Steinbeck

We can love and do righteous acts only by grace. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

This 'oh let's hug it out' without taking any responsibility is exactly the problem ... We are not silly irrational little girls. We are running a serious business with investments from the biggest VCs in the Valley. ~ Sarah Lacy

For even sheep do not vomit up their grass and show to the shepherds how much they have eaten; but when they have internally digested the pasture, they produce externally wool and milk. Do you also show not your theorems to the uninstructed, but show the acts which come from their digestion. ~ Epictetus

Politics can be a factor neither in shaping Islam nor directing Muslims' acts and attitudes in Islam's name. ~ Fethullah Gulen

Love doesn't need reason. It speaks from the irrational wisdom of the heart. ~ Deepak Chopra

And this charge plays out with partners, parents, friends, families and even our children. Many parents unconsciously 'use' their children so the parent can feel loved, important, special, and needed under the mask of being unconditionally loving to their children. The parent needs the child in order for the parent to feel love. This need is not love, simply another excuse for the parent to not feel their own lack and wound, and of course when the child acts up and does not meet their expectations, then the child receives harmful projections and verbal and physical abuse. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha

The Israelis have shown a degree of restraint in their use of violence that the Nazis never contemplated and that, more to the point, no Muslim society would contemplate today. Ask yourself, what are the chances that the Palestinians would show the same restraint in killing Jews if the Jews were a powerless minority living under their occupation and disposed to acts of suicidal terrorism? It would be no more likely than Muhammad's flying to heaven on a winged horse.35 ~ Sam Harris

I want people around the world to hear me. To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished. It will not dim the light of the values that we proudly present to the rest of the world. No act of violence shakes the resolve of the United States of America. ~ Barack Obama

I knew my affection for the Philippines was equally as telling: a democracy on paper, apparently well ordered, regularly subverted by irrational chaos. A place where I'd felt instantly at home. ~ Alex Garland

Floods are an act of God; flood
damages result from the acts of men. ~ Gilbert White

Remember that failure is part of the process of successful running. Performance is a roller coaster; to think otherwise is irrational and will cause you much stress and discouragement. Lighten up on yourself. Ups and downs can be expected. The performance of most serious runners fluctuates by the week. You win some, you lose some; some days you're hot, some days you're not. Don't fight with yourself when failure, the teacher, pays an unexpected visit. Open up to learning from it. ~ Jerry Lynch

Realism; fatalism; phlegm. To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the wide empty space of reality. Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens. Heavy drinking, madness and sudden acts of violence are not uncommon. How do you surmount reality, children? How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings? ~ Graham Swift