Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
You must strive to multiply bread so that it suffices for the tables of mankind, and not rather favor an artificial control of birth, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.
Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.
Symptoms, those you believe you recognize, seem to you irrational because you take them in an isolated manner, and you want to interpret them directly.
Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.
What lingers from the parent's individual past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes part of her or his irrational parenting.
You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do.
The more I work with the body, keeping my assumptions in a temporary state of reservation, the more I appreciate and sympathize with a given disease. The body no longer appears as a sick or irrational demon, but as a process with its own inner logic and wisdom.
There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.
Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.
I'm quite a rational person, but I'm drawn to the irrational. I love coincidences, and I like to question that in fiction: 'Is this random, or is there something working underneath?'
Abortion opponents know full well that the public would not abide putting women in prison en masse. Politically, it's more palatable to portray them as irrational, ignorant, and childlike, perhaps even temporarily insane.
I have an irrational fear that I'm going to have a gruesome and untimely death because so many wonderful things are happening to me.
I am bundle of nerves riddled with irrational fears.
I don't want to be in a position that could make me vomit, like air travel. I've purloined airsick bags and stuffed them everywhere, just in case I ever feel the need to throw up. I haven't vomited since 1977, but I think about it all the time. I recognize that it's irrational, but I'd rather jump out of a window than vomit.
You could argue that war is always an irrational act, and yet many states enter into military conflict out of rational calculation or national interest or the stability or longevity of their regime.
Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.
Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
Abnormal stresses and strains tend to accentuate man's animal instincts and provoke irrational and socially disruptive behavior among the less stable individuals in the maddening crowd.
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.
The importance in what we're seeing in countries around the world is a poorly regulated and poorly functioning private sector using irrational and ineffective medications that result in the emergence of drug-resistance tuberculosis. What we've done is begun a program to rapidly improve infection control in places that are treating TB patients.
Science fiction has always had a dark side. There has been a touch of the irrational and absurd in the genre from the very beginning.
We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and irrational.
It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.
Superstition is the irrational belief that an object or behavior has the power to influence an outcome, when there's no logical connection between them. Most of us aren't superstitious - but most of us are a 'littlestitious.'
The advance of science spares us from irrational dread.
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.
It may be irrational, but if you're local, the client often feels that, if worse comes to worst, they can knock on your door. They 'know where you live.' But when you're remote, they're going to be more suspicious when phone calls go unreturned or emails keep getting 'lost.' Stay on top of communications, and you'll reap the benefits.
One term that's used in this industry a lot is this notion of 'feeding the beast.' You've got all of these people whose livelihoods are dependent on it. There are enormous pressures to keep material going into it, and the pressures to feed it are not irrational. They're the basis of your business.
I don't get irrational about it, but I do have a deeply-rooted competitive spirit. Not necessarily towards other people, but towards any obstacle that I set for myself.
Distortions control my self-image, like they do for a lot of us. It's irrational.
For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware.
To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom.
As commissioner, I will attempt to see that no man is judged by the irrational criteria of race, religion, or national origin. And I assure you, I use the word 'man' in the generic sense, for I mean to see that the principle of nondiscrimination becomes a reality for women as well.
Being irrational and out of control is what happens in real life. Not cautiously choreographing your anger or your emotions, losing yourself in them is what happens in real life.
I don't know if it's irrational, and I would never say this before, but I think I'm a little bit agoraphobic when I'm in huge crowds of people. I mean, it's claustrophobic, probably - small spaces and large groups of people, anxiety rises for me.