For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence.
A person without a shadow should keep out of the sun, that is the only safe and rational plan.
In real life, I'm very rational, and I'm not very dramatic.
Stories need stupid decisions that, at the time, seem absolutely rational and necessary. Without stupid decisions, the world isn't thrown out of balance, and so there's no need for a 'rest of the story' to balance it back.
Of course I am partisan in my politics, but my partisanship is rational - which, in my book, is not necessarily oxymoronic.
Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.
First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker.
The very essence of political philosophy is the carving out of an ethical system - strictly, a subset of ethics dealing with political ethics. Ethics is the one rational discipline that demands the establishment of a rational set of value judgments; political ethics is that subset applying to matters of State.
Universities are the custodians not only of the many cultures of man, but of the rational process itself.
Despite all the lunacy of the last century, all the absurdity of war and genocide, we believe that humans being are rational and are made to seek the truth.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
I never got good at predicting what millions of people will suddenly decide is rational.
The word 'tolerance' once meant we all have the right to argue rationally for our deepest convictions in the public arena. Now it means those convictions are not even subject to rational debate.
Lucas attended a conference on rational expectations at the University of Minnesota in the spring of 1973. The day after the conference, I received a call from Pittsburgh.
When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind.
Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society.
Most Jews, like most rational persons, know that their personal identity and their ethnic identity are not one and the same.
Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science.
Cricket is not a rational sport in India, and we go overboard.
Presented with the claims of nineteenth-century racist anthropology, a rational person will ask two sorts of questions: 'What is the scientific status of the claims?' 'What social or ideological needs do they serve?'
The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.
No one ever pretended that shopping for anything is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exist?
The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.
In it not easy to remain rational and normal mentally in such a setting where, even in our airport in Montgomery, there is a white waiting room... There are restroom facilities for white ladies and colored women, white men and colored men. We stand outside after being served at the same ticket counter instead of sitting on the inside.
When an entrant competitor attacks the low end of any market, the rational reaction of the incumbent firms is to abandon rather than defend it - because the low end is the least profitable of their possible investments.
As an engineer, I learned that a long time ago: you don't want to get into a rational discussion about irrational subjects.
At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.
The happy medium - truth in all things - is no longer either known or valued; to gain applause, one must write things so inane that they might be played on barrel-organs, or so unintelligible that no rational being can comprehend them, though on that very account, they are likely to please.
To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.
It's time for the sensible center to rise up and push for a rational approach to our fiscal challenges.
George Bush and John Ashcroft were religious in a scary way, but the rational among us could always take heart that, deep down, the Bush administration was more cynical than messianic.
Emotions are one of the main things that derail communication. Once people get upset at one another, rational thinking goes out of the window.
China should be developing through the various foreign investments it receives. I hope for its level-headed and rational understanding that anything to discourage that is a disservice to itself.