A Quote by Vladimir Nabokov

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

Vladimir Nabokov

Quote Topics

Poetry Involves Irrational Mysteries Perceived Rational Through Words

Quote Author

Vladimir Nabokov
American - Novelist
April 22, 1899 - July 2, 1977

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

Poetry is a form of necessary speech... I have sought to restore the aura of sacred practice that accompanies true poetic creation, to honor both the rational and the irrational elements of poetry.

Edward Hirsch

It is slightly chilling to realize there are rational, functional people up there employed to spot, nurture, and exploit those down here among us who are irrational and can barely cope. If you want to know how stupid you’re perceived to be by the people up there, count the unsolicited junk mail you receive. If you get a lot, you’re perceived to be alluringly stupid.

Jon Ronson

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

To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.

Epictetus

If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesn't get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational.

Lars Peter Hansen

Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise.

Max Weber

If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesnt get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational.

Lars Peter Hansen

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.

Yann Martel

Through humour, we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant

Charlie Chaplin

In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?

Alan Lightman

The techniques of kitsch, which are based on imitation, are rational and operate according to formulas; the remain rational even when their result has a highly irrational, even crazy, quality.

Hermann Broch

The soul has two parts, one rational and the other irrational. Let us now similarly divide the rational part, and let it be assumed that there are two rational faculties, one whereby we contemplate those things whose first principles are invariable, and one whereby we contemplate those things which admit of variation.

Aristotle

There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women or that men are more willing to surrender their irrational beliefs. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

Albert Ellis

The medium of poetry is not words, the medium of poetry is not lines-it is the motion of air inside the human body, coming out through the chest and the voice box and through the mouth to shape sounds that have meaning. It's bodily.