346 Quotes About Rationality

What does it mean to call for a “democratic” solution if you don’t have a conflict-resolution mechanism in mind?I think it means that you have said the word “democracy,” so the audience is supposed to cheer. It’s not so much a propositional statement, as the equivalent of the “Applause” light that tells a studio audience when to clap.

Don't trust thoughts because you think them, but because they obey specific trustworthy rules.

Wisdom lies in thinking. The spear-head of thinking is rationalism.

The essence of extended rationality is to know when you are being irrational.

The most damaging cognitive bias is overconfidence (illusory superiority), making leaders use their “gut” when they should be more rational.

Many of the cataclysmic leadership failures were failures of rationality. The pendulum of leadership development needs to swing back toward the rational: strategy, creativity, foresight, decision-making, and analytics.

For more than twenty years, I have been seeking a way to be both rational and spiritual. I have been looking for a ray of hope in an otherwise-compartmentalized world in which people segregate religious aspirations and rationality in the hope of not having to resolve the glaring gap between the two. It’s a gap that seems almost impossible to bridge, but I refuse to accept that disparity.

You need one whole hell of a lot of rationality before it does anything but lead you into new and interesting mistakes.

If you didn't predict that something would happen, if it took you completely by surprise, then what you believed about the world when you didn't see it coming, isn't enough to explain [what has happened].