Unreason Quotes

“The difficulty is that, so long as unreason prevails, a solution of our troubles can only be reached by chance; for while reason, being impersonal, makes universal co-operation possible, unreason, since it represents private passions, makes strife inevitable. It is for this reason that rationality, in the sense of an appeal to a universal and impersonal standard of truth, is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species.”

“Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.”

“Maybe the consequences of someone’s unreason can be remedied only with a new unreason?”

“Unreason is an essential medicine as long as you do not overdose.”

“If the sleep of reason produces monsters, what does the sleep of unreason produce?”

“I survive by finding the sweet spot between reason and unreason, between the rational and irrational.”

“Reasonable men adapt to the world around them unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men. ”

“...Today the invisible hand seems confused and indecisive...Ideology and rhetoric increasingly guide policy decision, often bearing little relationship to factual reality. And the America we once knew seems divided and angry, defiantly embracing unreason.”

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

“The most dangerous negativity comes from ourselves in the form of doubts, fears and unreasonable self-criticisms.”