A Quote by Richard Dawkins

We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don't think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we're forever condemned to be irrational.

Richard Dawkins

Quote Topics

Accept Condemned Forever Good Irrational People Pessimistic Reasons Should Therefore Think

Quote Author

Richard Dawkins
English - Scientist
Born: March 26, 1941

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

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

I know that the dream mind is irrational, but I like to think that if I hear something in a dream that's really good, then it's irrational... but it's not crazy.

Ted Leo

North Koreans are irrational to some extent, but I don't think they're totally irrational. I think they watch American cable channels. I think they watch the European cable channels. I think they, their decision makers keep up more than we know. And I think they want us to think they're a little crazy.

William J. Clinton

While I think in principle people should not have irrational beliefs, I should say that as a matter of fact, it is people who hold what I regard as completely irrational beliefs who are among the most effective moral actors in the world, in many respects. They're among the worst, but also among the best, even though the moral beliefs are ostensibly the same.

Noam Chomsky

I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.

Claude Levi-Strauss

I think anybody who has been abused as a kid - and I was abused as a kid, by various people - will say it's irrational because violence is irrational.

Samantha Morton

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

I still believe that any country understands that if they use nuclear weapons, they will be wiped out of existence. They could be irrational in many ways, but I don't think they're irrational to the point that they're ready to annihilate their own country.

Mohamed ElBaradei

I don't think we are all irrational every time we fail to see through an argument in a book, but suppose it's true about you. You are still more rational than you think you are. You are irrational in a minor way - believing a misguided theory of the nature of rationality - but rational in a major way - you respond well to probabilistic evidence as you go through the day.

Nomy Arpaly

Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don't mean escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification.

Italo Calvino

In the '90s it was irrational exuberance. Now it may be irrational doom and gloom.

Robert Reich

Why will someone sell you a dollar for 50 cents? Because in the short run, people are irrational on both the optimistic and pessimistic side.

Peter Cundill

I chose the name Pi because it's an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a "rational" understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, "irrational" yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.