Thinking rationally is often different from "positive thinking," in that it is a realistic assessment of the situation, with a view towards rectifying the problem if possible. — Albert Ellis
Wisdom lies in thinking. The spear-head of thinking is rationalism. — Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
Rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos. — John Forbes Nash
Only when you combine sound intellect with emotional discipline do you get rational behavior. — Warren Buffett
Rationality and reason should always prevail over ideology and dogma. — Bret Weinstein
Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning. — Karen Horney
So, let us, you and I, for the sake of our brother man, individually strive by example and influence to lift the standard of thought and conduct from the low level of selfishness and self-indulgence up to the lofty realms of aspirational thought and self-denial. — Ossian Everett Mills
The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.
I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system. — Noam Chomsky
I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought. — Mortimer Adler
More than ambition, more than ability, it is rules that limit contribution; rules are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. They are a substitute for rational thought. — Hyman Rickover
When thinking about life, remember this: no amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.
For me, each game is a new challenge, which has to be dealt with rationally and systematically. At that time, every other thought fades into oblivion. — Viswanathan Anand
It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when 'my appetite for the absolute and for unity' meets 'the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle.' — Albert Camus
To unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matured, is a object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind. — George Boole
I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things. — Soseki Natsume
Logical Thinking Quotes
Live simply and without thinking too much, like a child with his father. Faith without too much thinking works wonders. The logical mind hinders the Grace of God and miracles. Practice patience without judging with the logical mind. — Elder Paisios of Mount Athos
In Architecture there is a part that is the result of Logical Reasoning and a part that is created through the Senses. There is always a point where they Clash. I don't think Architecture can be created without that Collision. — Tadao Ando
We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge.
You cannot approach people who think differently with reason and logic if they don't know what that means. First, you have to appeal to their values to start with. If you attack them, you lose them. — Jacque Fresco
Stop making sense. Logic is predictable. Think differently. — Paul Smith
Address to Albert Einstein: You are not thinking. You are merely being logical. — Niels Bohr
If you have a bad thought about yourself, tell it to go to hell because that is exactly where it came from.
Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world. All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. — Albert Einstein
A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do. — Niklaus Wirth
But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions. — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rational Decisions Quotes
When we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results. — James Clear
Those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome cannot see that for 63 million Americans, voting for Trump was an obviously rational decision. — Gad Saad
The decision to invest in an asset class must be rational, not emotional. — Naved Abdali
Just do what works for you, because there will always be someone who thinks differently.
If we are to make even remotely rational decisions about energy going forward, the reality of today’s unnatural level of nourishment and its dependence on fossil fuels need to be widely understood. — Alex Epstein
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
I feel that one must deliberate then act, must scan every life choice with rational thinking but then base the decision on whether one's heart will be in it. — Jean Shinoda Bolen
Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who yu are.
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 believe that decisions about the timing and manner of death belong to the individual as a human right. I believe it is wrong to withhold medical methods of terminating life painlessly and swiftly when an individual has a rational and clear-minded sustained wish to end his or her life. — A.C. Grayling
The movie business is very much like that: people in authority making purely emotional decisions instead of interesting rational ones. — Bill Forsyth
My position is to listen to my constituents, learn from the best information available and ultimately make sound, rational decisions that are going to be beneficial to the people of the 8th Congressional District. — Gabrielle Giffords
Logical Reasoning Quotes
I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found. — John Forbes Nash
There is no logical reason why thoughts, which have no substance, should have so much power over you, nor is there any reason why you should become their slave — Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing. — Claude LeviStrauss
First think, second believe, third dream and finally dare.
Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing. — Claude Levi-Strauss
The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. — Eugene Wigner
My purity manifests itself in countless ways, including an utter inability to sit idly when exposed to attacks on truth, reason, logic, and/or individual dignity. — Gad Saad
I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.
All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically — Steven Weinberg
There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence. — Rebecca West
Chess is a very logical game and it is the man who can reason most logically and profoundly in it that ought to win. — Jose Raul Capablanca
When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream? — Rene Descartes
Conceptual Thinking Quotes
I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about. — Andrew Wiles
All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. — George Lakoff
Every time you find some humor in a difficult situation, you win.
I do think it's important that we experiment with new vocabularies. That new words help us conceptualize our social existence in a different way. — Judith Butler
Words are a distraction to enlightenment. Getting rid of conceptual thinking means enlightenment. — Ramesh S Balsekar
General relativity is the cornerstone of cosmology and astrophysics. It has also provided the conceptual basis for string theory and other attempts to unify all the forces of nature in terms of geometrical structures. — Paul Davies
Speak with honesty, think with sincerity, act with integrity.
I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music. — Boz Scaggs
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Thinking fragments reality - it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces. — Eckhart Tolle
The Buddha himself said, "I still use conceptual thinking, but I'm not formed by it." And that's the Buddha. — Tenzin Palmo
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. — Albert Einstein
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. — Aldous Huxley
There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy. — Blaise Pascal
If you are not the victim, don't examine it entirely from your point of view because when YOU'RE not the victim, it becomes pretty easy to rationalize and excuse cruelty, injustice, inequality, slavery, and even murder. But when you're the victim, things look a lot differently from that angle. — Gary Yourofsky
Western civilisation needs a complete overhaul or it will fall apart one day or another. It has realised the most complete perversion of any rational order of things. Reign of matter, of gold, of machine, of number, it no longer possesses breath, or liberty, or light. — Julius Evola
Any opposition not based on rationalism or science or experience will one day or other, reveal the fraud, selfishness, lies and conspiracies. — Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free. — Kavita Ramdas
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude. — Karl Popper
Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations. — John Von Neumann
Critical Thinking Quotes
Merciless criticism and independent thinking are the two necessary traits of revolutionary thinking. — Bhagat Singh
Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. — William Arthur Ward
Before you react, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you criticize, wait. Before you quit, try. — Ernest Hemingway
Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you. — Richard Dawkins
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely. — E. O. Wilson
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work. — Adrienne Rich
The greatest prison people live in is the fear of what other people think. — David Icke
Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked. — Fulton J. Sheen
Many pastors criticize me for taking the Gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me, saying, 'Leonard, you took Me too seriously'? — Leonard Ravenhill
Being Rational Quotes
The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics. — Johannes Kepler
To be loved, feelings must be rationed. To love, the doors of hysteria, fantasy, and madness may be flung open. — Anton Szandor LaVey
Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them. — Salvador Dali
I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife — Kurt Gödel
I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth — Karl Popper
If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? — Gloria Steinem
I think 'vegan' is a beautiful word. It is more than just a description for our diet. I see it as a visible template for an ethical, healthy, responsible, and rational life. Because it describes our character, it says we do not take the life of another living being to satisfy our wants. — Philip Wollen
We didn’t evolve to be healthy, but instead we were selected to have as many offspring as possible under diverse, challenging conditions. As a consequence, we never evolved to make rational choices about what to eat or how to exercise in conditions of abundance and comfort. — Daniel Lieberman
You have to be just as mistrustful of straightforward rationality in business as you do of a uniquely gut approach. — Bernard Arnault
If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible. — Wilhelm Reich
Abstract Thinking Quotes
I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism. — Don Delillo
Jesus was short on sermons, long on conversations; short on answers, long on questions; short on abstraction and propositions, long on stories and parables; short on telling you what to think, long on challenging you to think for yourself. — Brian D. McLaren
I think most people, when they think about the Black Panther Party, they think in very abstract, caricatured terms. They think about black fists in the air, but they don't think about the actual people, and the families, and the relationships. — Kerry Washington
The ideal trademark is one that is pushed to its utmost limits in terms of abstraction and ambiguity, yet is still readable. Trademarks are usually metaphors of one kind or another. And are, in a certain sense, thinking made visible. — Saul Bass
Art - when it is really doing what it should do - teaches abstract thinking; it teaches teamwork; it teaches people to actually think about things that they cannot see. — Bill T. Jones
When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality. — Julie Taymor
It's not about facts, it's about feelings. It's about remembering feelings and happiness. A definition of art is that it makes concrete our most subtle emotions. I think the highest form of art is music. It's the most abstract of all art expression. — Agnes Martin
I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much. — Newt Gingrich
Everything will be all right - you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves. — Dag Hammarskjold
But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience. — Romare Bearden
Moral Reasoning Quotes
You can't make people change, but the organizers of WorldFest hope that people consider being vegetarian for both moral and health reasons — Grace Slick
Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. — George Washington
How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism. — Edward George BulwerLytton
How many of us have been first attracted to reason, first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism from Rochefoucauld or La Bruyere. — Bill Vaughan
How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Freemasonry is an institution founded on eternal reason and truth; whose deep basis is the civilization of mankind, and whose everlasting glory it is to have the immovable support of those two mighty pillars, science and morality. — George Washington
The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or color, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever. — Simone Weil
If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. — Ludwig von Mises
Having killed God, the atheist is left with no reason for being, no morality to espouse, no meaning to life, and no hope beyond the grave. — Ravi Zacharias
The only reason why you are unhappy is because you are trying to be happy. — Jaggi Vasudev
Emotions are one of the main things that derail communication. Once people get upset at one another, rational thinking goes out of the window. — Chris Voss
I think I got off on the wrong planet. Beam me up Scotty, there's no rational life here. — Robert Anton Wilson
If you attach your mind to any ideology, you're going to be on a road, and that road may or may not lead you in a good direction. But you're gonna stay on that road because you are attached to an ideology. It could be a terrible road, but you stick with it regardless of rational thinking. — Joe Rogan
In daily life, reality gives us material incentives to restrain our irrationality. But what incentive do we have to think rationally about politics? — Bryan Caplan
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. — Bertrand Russell
I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health. — John Forbes Nash, Jr.
You don't have to believe everything you think. — Erykah Badu
Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. — Horace Mann
I dont agree with those who think that the conflict is simply between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam... To me, the key conflict is between irrational blind faith and rational, logical minds. — Taslima Nasrin
Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can't even think straight. — Marilyn French
Out of an intuitive experience of the world comes a continuous flow of novel distinctions. Purely rational understanding, on the other hand, serves to confirm old mindsets, rigid categories. Artists, who live in the same world as the rest of us, steer clear of these mindsets to make us see things anew. — Ellen Langer
I believe that the subconscious always knows what is best. It is our conditional, vastly overrated rational mind which screws everything up. — Robyn Davidson
Being deceived into thinking the perks of slavery are a good thing, we can easily aquire a preference for chains and a taste for the slaves rations. — Dennis Green
The ultimate solutions to problems are rational; the process of finding them is not. — J. P. Guilford
I think the more rational explanation is that the excision of a five-to-six-foot leech from the surface of a human body means that that body is going to have more of its own blood in its own veins. Unless the leech finds another body, it is going to go hungry. — Dave Sim
Overachievers don't think reasonably, sensibly, or rationally. — John Eliot
God gave us minds to think with and hearts to thank with. Instead we use our hearts to think about the world as we would like it to have been, and we use our minds to come up with rationalizations for our ingratitude. We are a murmuring, discontented, unhappy, ungrateful people. And because we think we want salvation from our discontents. — Douglas Wilson
All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts. — Ludwig von Mises
In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea. — Dave Hickey
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. — Albert Einstein
I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and -- and rational argument. — Barack Obama
We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in we'll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said." Love is the only rational act. — Morrie Schwartz
I think in a world where everyone wants to categorize and compartmentalize and rationalize, it's OK to be different. — Miguel
Knowing about the neurobiological and evolutionary basis for social behavior can soften the arrogance and self-righteousness that often attends discussions of morality. It may help us all to think a little more carefully and rationally. — Patricia Churchland
Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by other people, we get indoctrinated and we get influenced by advertising. — Ha-Joon Chang
A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think. — Eleanor Roosevelt
Of course the self-serving bias is something you want to get out of yourself. Thinking that what's good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on this subconscious tendency to serve one's self is a terribly inaccurate way to think. — Charlie Munger
In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives. — Stephen King
Business is essentially applied rationality:
a systematic process of thinking that produces a real-world result. Instead of mortgaging your life to go to business school, it's possible to dramatically increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost - without setting foot inside a classroom. — Josh Kaufman
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. — H. L. Mencken
Dieting on New Year's Day isn't a good idea as you can't eat rationally but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment, in order to ease your hangover. I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second. — Helen Fielding
Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions. — Erich Fromm
If the process don't transfer, they cannot even be called thinking. They can be called learning, memory, or habit, but not thinking. The purpose of a course on thinking is to enhance student's abilities to face new challenges and to attack novel problems confidently, rationally and productively. — Marilyn Jager Adams
For me, I think the greatest achievements of science is to allow humanity to realize that our world is comprehensible. Through science, rational thinking, we can understand how the universe works. — Jim Al-Khalili
To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. — Stephen Hawking
I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind. — Albert Einstein
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of rational thinking quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about rational thinking to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of rational thinking quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
