rational action Quotes

Here's the perversity of Wall Street's psychology: The more Wall Street is convinced that Washington will act rationally and raise the debt ceiling, most likely at the 11th hour, the less pressure there will be on lawmakers to reach an agreement. That will make it more likely a deal isn't reached.

What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists - whatever else they might be - might also be rational human beings; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions.

We have a high moral responsibility to be rational

One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.

It is sometimes rational to do what is wrong, and sometimes irrational to do what is right

Legal behavior is not incompatible with rational, self-interested behavior.

He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.

If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible.

What are emotions exactly?' Lutta asked. 'Silly feelings that get in the way of actions.

They are circumspect to do their actions by advise and councell, and not rashly or inconsiderately

If any successes has come to me, it came because I insisted on thinking things through. That's all I was capable of doing in life, was thinking pretty hard about trying to get the right answer, and then acting on it. I never learned to do anything else.

The task of the mind is to produce future, as the poet Paul Valery once put it. A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator. It mines the present for clues, which it refines with the help of the materials it has saved from the past, turning them into anticipations of the future. And then it acts, rationally, on the basis of those hard-won anticipations.

All our acts, reasoned and unreasoned, are selfish

I like acting impulsively, but I'm also extremely thoughtful about what I do. So, it's not like someone would say 'Don't do something,' and I'd automatically go, 'I'm gonna do it anyway.'

Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.

Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.

To a rational being it is the same thing to act according to nature and according to reason.

Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.

All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.

Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest pleasure of the acting individual.

A man should always have these two rules in readiness. First, to do only what the reason of your ruling and legislating faculties suggest for the service of man. Second, to change your opinion whenever anyone at hand sets you right and unsettles you in an opinion, but this change of opinion should come only because you are persuaded that something is just or to the public advantage, not because it appears pleasant or increases your reputation.

When . . . in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.