A Quote by Noam Chomsky

I am a child of the Enlightenment. I think irrational belief is a dangerous phenomenon, and I try to consciously avoid irrational belief. On the other hand, I certainly recognize that it's a major phenomenon for people in general, and you can understand why it would be. It does, apparently, provide personal sustenance, but also bonds of association and solidarity and a means for expressing elements of one's personality that are often very valuable elements. To many people it does that. In my view, there's nothing wrong with that.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
American - Activist
Born: December 7, 1928

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.

Noam Chomsky

With the near-death or clinical near-death phenomenon some people who are brought back from 'death' have reported being alive the entire time they were 'dead.' This phenomenon occurs among people with a wide diversity of religious belief and no religious belief at all - from atheists to Zen Buddhists.

John Ankerberg

I believe, in the stock market - that's one of my fields - that most people are irrational. And to be irrational, you can be irrational in so many different ways that, practically, the result is indeterminate.

Paul Samuelson

It doesn't sound rational for a Klansman to sit down to dinner with a black man. What you're overlooking is, to be racist is to be irrational. So, they are already irrational, and irrational people do irrational things. That's why a Klansman will sit down with me.

Daryl Davis

Look at the Intifadah in Jerusalem. One cannot understand that phenomenon, a phenomenon where people, often very young boys, are successfully harassing one of the best armies in the world, without appreciating their freedom to move!

Paul Virilio

The idea of UFOs is becoming a very prevalent phenomenon in people's consciousness. People believe in them. What does this mean? It means that people have a place to look to other than our government! People have a place to look for guidance and authority that is much more enlightened.

Brad Steiger

PRONOIA: The irrational belief that people like you

Jon Winokur

When you grow up being taught to worship, whatever that means, there is an array of body-rich symbols: tears, blood, crucifixion, the stations of the cross, transubstantiation... Faith is a belief in something that is irrational, and so to have faith, there is some correlation there with the belief in the art.

Robert Gober

Often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world, the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to, like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places.

Charles de Lint

Our lives are more like fragmentary dreams than the enactments of conscious selves. We control very little of what we most care about; many of our most fateful decisions are made unbeknownst to ourselves. Yet we insist that mankind can achieve what we cannot: conscious mastery of its existence. This is the creed of those who have given up an irrational belief in God for an irrational faith in mankind.

John Gray

I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who don't share that belief.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

But you must still know to respect other people's faith.' 'Why? We don't respect any other delusion. We lock up people who believe they're Christ, yet we're supposed to humour those who believe in him.' 'By definition, faith is irrational: a belief you hold against the normal rules of evidence.' 'In which case I believe in Jedi

Michael Arditti

I think it's ok to have wishes that conflict with each other - it's irrational to try to make them both come true, but not irrational simply to have them.

Nomy Arpaly

No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person most of whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves.

Marcel Proust

When you find yourself reluctant to sit on a chair because it had unexpectedly collapsed in the past you might shake your head and think "there, I'm so irrational!". But your reluctance to sit on a probably rickety chair is not irrational - you think it's irrational because you have a false view of what irrationality is.

Nomy Arpaly

The thing that concerns me more than anything is when anybody becomes closed off and exclusive of other people's ideas. All of our brains are in the same mode of searching when trying to understand reality, and when we come to a belief system that makes sense to us we hold it strongly, whether it's an atheist view, or a Christian view, or a Muslim view, whatever, then it's very hard to let go and I think it's so important to try to foster dialogue.

Andrew B. Newberg

A Quote by Noam Chomsky

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