Irrational Beliefs Quotes

Hellenic science is a victory of rationalism, which appears greater, not smaller, when one is made to realize that it had been won in spite of the irrational beliefs of the Greek people; all in all, it was a triumph of reason in the face of unreason. Some knowledge of Greek superstitions is needed not only for a proper appreciation of that triumph but also for the justification of occasional failures, such as the many Platonic aberrations. ~ George Sarton

I can think of no wiser financial investment than in self-knowledge. It is the path to freedom, at many levels. By sorting through painful past experiences, irrational beliefs, and unacknowledged fears, people can become free of these chains and find healthier ways of coping than making money and consuming things. ~ Tim Kasser

What happens if fully rational politicians compete for the support of irrational voters - specifically, voters with irrational beliefs about the effects of various policies? It is a recipe for mendacity. ~ Bryan Caplan

The point is that religion puts a value on irrationality, which makes it the perfect tool for promoting irrational beliefs like misogyny. Other ideologies can be challenged with evidence and reason, but religion is allowed a pass by most people. And that's why it's especially dangerous. ~ Amanda Marcotte

Cognitive Therapy

Instead of behavior, cognitive therapy emphasizes changing thoughts and beliefs. Cognitive therapists believe that irrational beliefs or distorted thinking patterns lead to social anxiety so they teach patients to think in more rational, constructive ways. ~ Heather Moehn

PRONOIA: The irrational belief that people like you ~ Jon Winokur

There are many things that can keep you in a relationship," I say. "Fear of being alone. Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life. A decision to settle for something that's okay, because you don't know if you can get any better. Or maybe there's the irrational belief that it will get better, even if you know he won't change. ~ David Levithan

Superstition is the irrational belief that an object or behavior has the power to influence an outcome, when there's no logical connection between them. Most of us aren't superstitious - but most of us are a 'littlestitious.' ~ Gretchen Rubin

Irrational beliefs are culturally accepted delusions. ~ Robert Todd Carroll

Changing irrational beliefs can impact multiple areas of life. It doesn't matter how many times you repeat affirmations for success but if you don't change your core beliefs, the changes will be temporary. ~ Hina Hashmi

What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Can this be in human nature! - Can such horrible perversion of right be permitted! Can man, who calls himself endowed with reason, and immeasurably superior to every other created being, argue himself into the commission of such horrible folly, such inveterate cruelty, as exceeds all the acts of the most irrational and ferocious brute. Brutes do not deliberately slaughter their species; it remains for man only, man, proud of his prerogative of reason, and boasting of his sense of justice, to unite the most terrible extremes of folly and wickedness! ~ Ann Radcliffe

Writing is how I communicate my deepest beliefs, and what I hope are helpful observations about our dual citizenship, as children of God, as regular old mixed-up, worried, flawed, precious human beings. ~ Anne Lamott

We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Our personal identities are socially situated. We are where we live, eat, work, and make love. [ ... ]
Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us. The expectations of others often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Without realizing it, we often behave in ways that confirm the beliefs others have about us. Those subjective beliefs create new realities for us. We often become who other people think we are, in their eyes and in our behavior. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Robinson's discussion with God:

"Tell me what it's like."
"What what's like?"
"To be God."
"Like, how do you mean?"
"Like, how does it make you feel to know you've created the planet earth and all its inhabitants. Do you feel proud? Sad? Embarrassed? Humbled? Mortified?"
"The truth? I feel imposed upon. I feel like an exhausted father whose needy children never grew up. Do you know what I'd like to see? Honest to me, this would make me the happiest guy on earth. I'd like to see everyone just take responsibility for themselves. Stop seeking my favor with your expensive churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. And quit wasting your time expecting me to solve all your problems. Am I the numbskull who created all your stupid problems? No, all I ever did was plant a handful of seeds. I'm not the one who cheats, lies, plunders, steals, hoodwinks, bribes, and scratches and claws his backward way through the unfaithful to his loving spouse or who is disrespectful to his parents. And I'm not the one who rapes and pollutes oceans, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, deserts, and mesas. I'm not the one who's slaughtering all the whales in the seas, and I'm certainly not the one who's spreading AIDS, shooting innocent people with handguns and assault rifles, or overpopulating the planet. I'm not even responsible for acts of God. So what of the forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornados? You can thank dear Mother Nature for these so-called act ~ Mark Lages

#Dialogue does a remarkable thing in restoring mind, that is, to rescue it from authority-systems and rigid beliefs. ~ Anthony Blake

The internal system of an abuse victim differs from the non-abuse system with regard to the consistent absence of the effective leadership, the extreme rules under which the parts function, and the absenve of any consistent balance or harmony. Typically, the parts operate around outdated assumptions and beliefs derived from the childhood abuse, believing, for example, that it is still extremely dangerous to reveal secrets about childhood experiences which were endured. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience. ~ Christopher Hitchens

We come astonishingly close to the mystical beliefs of Pythagoras and his followers who attempted to submit all of life to the sovereignty of numbers. Many of our psychologists, sociologists, economists and other latter-day cabalists will have numbers to tell them the truth or they will have nothing ... We must remember that Galileo merely said that the language of nature is written in mathematics. He did not say that everything is. And even the truth about nature need not be expressed in mathematics. For most of human history, the language of nature has been the language of myth and ritual. These forms, one might add, had the virtues of leaving nature unthreatened and of encouraging the belief that human beings are part of it. It hardly befits a people who stand ready to blow up the planet to praise themselves too vigorously for having found the true way to talk about nature. ~ Neil Postman

You tell them what a happy ending consists of, which is always individual success. You tell them that nothing irrational exists in this world, which is a lie. You tell them that conflict only exists only to be neatly resolved, and that everyone who is poor wants to be rich, and everyone who is ill wants to get better, and everyone who gets involved in crime comes to a bad end, and that love should be pure. You tell them that despite all this they are special, that the world revolves around them ... ~ Scarlett Thomas

It's a cycle ... Religion is a source of relief for those who seek to anesthetize the pain that comes from following its beliefs. ~ Steve Maraboli

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposed to rob us of their companionship. ~ James Harvey Robinson

In the music industry I get a lot of public judgement. Any time the topic of my religion surfaces, there are always people who react negatively, telling me to leave my crazy beliefs out of it. The problem is, I can't. My beliefs are as much a part of my being as my music, or my family, or my obsession with earthy-tasting cereal. Luckily, after all the rejection I faced on my mission, I'm no longer afraid of negative reactions. I've already heard it all--- face-to-face. Hateful comments still hurt, but they don't hold the same weight they once did. Besides, say what you want, but I'm a short-haired angel. (Or at least I was to one man on a subway.) ~ Lindsey Stirling

I don't discuss my own beliefs in public, but I will say the beliefs I've given my characters do not necessarily represent what I myself believe. ~ Christopher Paolini

We don't like checklists. They can be painstaking. They're not much fun. But I don't think the issue here is mere laziness. There's something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us - those we aspire to be - handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating. ~ Atul Gawande

Anxiety was an irrational beast. ~ Dannika Dark

Beliefs are the eyelids of the mind. ~ David Zindell

When the political partisan's beliefs are insulted or ridiculed, he feels the 'offence' as deeply as any believer who has heard his god or prophet questioned. We do not, however, prohibit or restrict arguments about politics out of 'respect' for political ideologies, because we are a free society. We call societies that prohibit political arguments 'dictatorships', and know without needing to be told that the prohibiting is done to protect the ruling elite. ~ Nick Cohen

Religious freedom doesn't include the freedom to disregard the law and restrict another's freedom to believe and act differently. No one's forcing Catholic nuns to practice birth control, or priests to wear condoms (good idea tho). If you really feel your religious beliefs conflict with the mandates of running a business, the solution is simple: Get your ass out of the boardroom and back to the pulpit (where it belongs). ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

When you're anxious, don't immediately trust your automatic thoughts because oftentimes these thoughts are irrational. Thoughts are not facts. They're just thoughts and sometimes don't need to be given so much importance. ~ John Tsilimparis

Respecting the opinions and beliefs of another, even if they differ from yours, is a genuine sign of love. ~ Charles F. Glassman

A man's beliefs about the effects of the substance will largely be borne out. If he believes that alcohol can make him aggressive, it will, as research has shown. On the other hand, if he doesn't attribute violence-causing powers to substances, he is unlikely to become aggressive even when severely intoxicated. ~ Lundy Bancroft

Increase Mather, President of Harvard University, in his treatise on Remarkable Providences, insists that the smell of herbs alarms the Devil and that medicine expels him. Such beliefs have probably even now not wholly disappeared from among us. ~ James Henry Breasted

Our search for the Master Algorithm is complicated, but also enlivened, by the rival schools of thought that exist within machine learning. The main ones are the symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers. Each tribe has a set of core beliefs, and a particular problem that it cares most about. It has found a solution to that problem, based on ideas from its allied fields of science, and it has a master algorithm that embodies it. ~ Pedro Domingos

We are all far less rational in our decision-making than standard economic theory assumes. Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless: they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of the basic wiring of our brains. ~ Dan Ariely

Our return to an image-based culture means the destruction of the abstract thought made possible by a literate, print-based society. Image-based societies do not grasp or cope with ambiguity, nuance, doubt and the many layers of irrational motives and urges, some of them frightening, that make human actions complex and finally unfathomable. They eschew self-criticism for amusement. They build fantastic non-reality-based belief systems that cater to human desires and illusions rather than human reality. These illusions, whether religious or secular, offer a simple and unexamined myth that the human race is advancing morally, spiritually and materially toward paradise. This advance is proclaimed as inevitable. This faith in our advancement makes us passive and complacent. ~ Chris Hedges

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search. ~ Bertrand Russell

The miracle centered gospel gives rise to a generation of people that believes that they don't need to be good, better than anybody else but just want to pray and get favor. ~ Sunday Adelaja

And yet it had come to this: a cult that followed a dogmatic hard line of exclusion and repression, believed its teachings alone were the way that others must follow, and claimed special knowledge of something that had happened more than five centuries ago. It did nothing to soften its rigid stance, nothing to heal wounds that it had helped to create by deliberately shunning people of other Races, and nothing to explore the possibility of other beliefs. It held its ground even in the face of hard evidence that perhaps it had misjudged and refused to consider that it was courting a danger that might destroy everyone. p96 ~ Terry Brooks

I'm at my strongest when I'm able to let go, when I suspend my beliefs as well as disbeliefs, and leave myself open to all possibilities. That also seems to be when I'm able to experience the most internal clarity and synchronicities. ~ Anita Moorjani

All religious beliefs seem weird to people not brought up in them. ~ Richard Dawkins

Interest in religion is not necessarily interest in God. Religion in public life means a set of ideas, an ideology that has certain positions. Religion is then one more ideology among others. Religion is about God. Religion begins with a relationship to God, not a relationship to an idea. It is God who is an actor, not just individuals who have certain beliefs who are actors. God is an actor. ~ Francis George

External actions are evidence of internal beliefs. Our deeds are what show our creeds. ~ Tim Hiller

Humans need their lives to make sense and to have meaning and purpose. Lack of meaning and purpose can override both the natural pace of progression to death and the instinctive struggle for life. People may sacrifice their lives in order to achieve meaning and purpose, or they may commit suicide in order to avoid meaninglessness. The role of medicine here is to expose false beliefs for which people may sacrifice themselves, and to help find realistic meanings that make life worthwhile. ~ Paul Valent

The very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship ~ Jonathan Haidt

But when members of a burgeoning couple invest feelings without confirmed reciprocation, they naturally become irrational, insecure, and just a little bit dumb. ~ Nora Zelevansky

It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher. ~ Alain De Botton

Man, the rational animal, can put up with anything except what seems to him irrational; whatever is rational is tolerable. ~ Epictetus

I believe that You Reap What You Sow. I believe that we don't meet people by accident; everything happens for a reason. I believe that standing for what you believe in isn't an easy thing but it's the right thing to do; be brave to stand for what you believe in even if you stand alone. ~ Roy Bennett

The calamities that are constantly being reported - battles, massacres, famines, revolutions - tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. ~ George Orwell

While the meeting I participated in turned out to be a ruse, I made statements during the course of the meeting that are counter to NPR's values and also not reflective of my own beliefs. I offer my sincere apology to those I offended. ~ Ron Schiller

He feels an irrational dislike taking root, and he tries to dismiss it, because he prefers his dislikes rational, but after all, these circumstances are extreme ... ~ Hilary Mantel

Irrational crime and rational crime, in fact, both equally betray the value brought to light by the
movement of rebellion. Let us first consider the former. He who denies everything and assumes the
authority to kill - Sade, the homicidal dandy, the pitiless Unique, Karamazov, the zealous supporters of
the unleashed bandit - lay claim to nothing short of total freedom and the unlimited display of human
pride. Nihilism confounds creator and created in the same blind fury. Suppressing every principle of hope,
it rejects the idea of any limit, and in blind indignation, which no longer is even aware of its reasons, ends
with the
conclusion that it is a matter of indifference to kill when the victim is already condemned to death. ~ Albert Camus

God is calling you to relinquish your old habits and beliefs that are holding you back from being all He called you to be. To trust that He has something bigger and better in store for you. ~ Dana Arcuri

Nor would I even begin to try to describe what she looks like as she's telling the story, reliving it, she's naked, hair spilling all down her back, sitting meditatively cross-legged amid the wrecked bedding and smoking ultralight Merits from which she keeps removing the filters because she claims they're full of additives and unsafe - unsafe as she's sitting there chain-smoking, which was so patently irrational that I couldn't even bring - yes and some kind of blister on her Achilles tendon, from the sandals, leaning with her upper body to follow the oscillation of the fan so she's moving in and out of a wash of moon from the window whose angle of incidence itself alters as the moon moves up and across the window - all I can tell you is she was lovely. The bottoms of her feet dirty, almost black. The moon so full it looks engorged. ~ David Foster Wallace

Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed in what America stood for. ~ Tom Clancy

We are always people that are in the making, constantly adapting to accommodate the roads we walk. As we learn, it changes us. As we go about our course, we grow, and prune everything around us; friends, beliefs, desires. Our past experiences plant the seeds needed for our future roads, with all its turns, speed, and treachery. ~ Kat Lahr

It remains to consider what attitude thoughtful men and Christian believers should take respecting them, and how they stand related to beliefs of another order. ~ Asa Gray

Having faith, beliefs, and convictions is a great thing, but your life is measured by the actions you take based upon them. ~ Nick Vujicic