A Quote by Amy Hempel

I get rational when I panic. — © Amy Hempel
I get rational when I panic.

Quote Topics

Panic is efficient. Panic is effective. Panic is the way I get things done! Panic attacks are my booster rockets!
I make a project and I panic. Which is good, it can be a method. First, panic. Second, conquer panic by working. Third, find ways to solve your doubts.
The only situation which might justify panic is one in which panic is likely to help. Such a situation never arises. Though pretended panic may sometimes cause a useful diversion, real panic can never be anything other than a waste of energy.
Panic implies that there is no rational thought taking place. That we are frozen and incapable of adjusting. Powerless to logic, and subject to seemingly unthinkable behavior.
You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn't nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.
I'm not a panic guy. I don't do that. Can't. When you're a leader, you can never panic, no matter what's happening. The building could be falling down. Fire could be going all places. Somebody has to make a decision on how to get out.
Fear can keep you alive. The trick is not to let it overwhelm you. Not to let it rule you. If you’re afraid, that’s the universe trying to tell you something. Get away. Don’t run; don’t panic. Just pick up and walk out, calm as you please. Panic makes you stupid.
The difference between fear and panic is knowing what to do. If you have a reliable, effective solution then fear is an asset. You know what to do and fear just makes you do it faster. On the other hand, if you don't know what to do - or don't trust what you know - then you will freeze in terror, because you have no clear goal or way to get there. Fear helps, panic hinders. Fear is your savior, panic your nemesis.
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.
It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are on vacation, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are happy, we are not [rational]. In fact, in more cases than not, when we are rational, we're actually unhappy. Emotion is good; passion is good. Being into what we're into, provided that it's a healthy pursuit, it's a good thing.
[I had a sense of interior panic].Always. I didn't really know what to call it for a long time, but I have a friend in Greece who used that word panic a lot, and I found myself resisting it, until I totally accepted that as a precise description of my interior condition. It was mostly panic from one moment to the next. And nothing much else was going on.
Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy . . . Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
Speed as a drug disorganizes the personality; speed as the goal of information dissemination commits a subtler crime. People are mainlining our words. We rarely read of the rational alternatives, only of the commands that all must change or else. This is a prescription for public panic.
I have tried to keep my eco-anxiety at bay, to box it into my working life. But every month this becomes more difficult. The rising sense of panic I feel is entirely rational; we should all be feeling it. But we can't live with it through every hour of every day.
I think that I don't panic as much as the folks on the left or the right do. I don't have that sense of panic.
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