Rationalise Quotes

Irrationality is the exclusive preserve of humans as among all creatures only we have the power to rationalise, that being the art of packaging patently irrational as apparently rational. ~ R.N. Prasher

You'd be amazed at the grand tales the human brain will throw up to make sense of something nonsensical. ~ Dianna Hardy

Economics becomes redundant if it can rationalise an exchange that sells the future of humankind. ~ Andrew Simms

Circumstance is just an excuse for the weak to rationalise their failures. ~ Amish Tripathi

Ashwin has only lied to me once, and that was when he tried to convince me he wasn't capable of caring about you. In any game Ashwin is playing, you'll always be the queen."
"I think it's his tell, Kora. Efficiency. When he feels something he doesn't know how to process-compassion, caring even just the urge to help someone-he has to rationalise it, so he claims he's just being efficient. ~ Kit Rocha

The substance of all such paganism may be summarised thus. It is an attempt to reach the divine reality through the imagination alone; in its own field reason does not restrain it at all. It is vital to the view of all history that reason is something separate from religion even in the most rational of these civilisations. It is only as an afterthought, when such cults are decadent or on the defensive, that a few Neo-Platonists or a few Brahmins are found trying to rationalise them, and even then only by trying to allegorise them. But in reality the rivers of mythology and philosophy run parallel and do not mingle till they meet in the sea of Christendom. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Being a Barrymore didn't help me, other than giving me a great sense of pride and a strange spiritual sense that I felt OK about having the passion to act. It made sense because my whole family had done it and it helped rationalise it for me. ~ Drew Barrymore

While a good story must give me a role, and must extend beyond my horizons, it need not be true. A story can be pure fiction, and yet provide me with an identity and make me feel that my life has meaning. Indeed, to the best of our scientific understanding, none of the thousands of stories that different cultures, religions and tribes have invented throughout history is true. They are all just human inventions. If you ask for the true meaning of life and get a story in reply, know that this is the wrong answer. The exact details don't really matter. Any story is wrong, simply for being a story. The universe just does not work like a story.
So why do people believe in these fictions? One reason is that their personal identity is built on the story. People are taught to believe in the story from early childhood. They hear it from their parents, their teachers, their neighbours and the general culture long before they develop the intellectual and emotional independence necessary to question and verify such stories. By the time their intellect matures, they are so heavily invested in the story, that they are far more likely to use their intellect to rationalise the story than to doubt it. Most people who go on identity quests are like children going treasure hunting. They find only what their parents have hidden for them in advance.
Second, not only our personal identities but also our collective institutions are built on the story. Consequently, it is extremely frighte ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Everyone thinks that they are some form of genius until they try to rationalise with a child. ~ Gillian Duce

[W]e are hardened to what we know, and we rationalise and even justify cruelties practised by us and our like while retaining the capacity to be outraged, even disgusted by practices equally cruel which, under the hands of strangers, take a different form. ~ John Keegan