A Quote by Anatole France
Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.
Related Quotes
Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.
The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot.
I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
I fear animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason - as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal.
To say that a man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.
To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.
The petty man is eager to make boasts, yet desires that others should believe in him. He enthusiastically engages in deception, yet wants others to have affection for him. He conducts himself like an animal, yet wants others to think well of him.
Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.
Man is a thinking animal, a talking animal, a toolmaking animal, a building animal, a political animal, a fantasizing animal. But, in the twilight of a civilization he is chiefly a taxpaying animal.
There is no more reason to believe that man descended from an inferior animal than there is to believe that a stately mansion has descended from a small cottage.
There is no more reason to believe that man descended from some inferior animal than there is to believe that a stately mansion has descended from a small cottage.
Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.
There was an idea that God created man different from other animals, because man was rational and animals had drives and instincts. That idea of a rational man that was specially created went out the window when Darwin showed that we evolved from animal ancestors, that we have instincts, much as do animals, and that our instincts are very important. It was a much more sophisticated, nuanced, and rich view of the human mind.
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