Irrationalism Quotes

“The problem arises when a society respects its scholars lesser and lesser and replaces intellectualism with anti-intellectualism. Such society forces the most intellectual members of its, toward alienation and instead develops populism and irrationalism and then calls it anti-elitism. On the other hand, scholars, due to being undermined by the society, find any effort hopeless and isolate themselves into their work. For a scholar, personally, nothing changes because the scholar always is a scholar no matter having someone to share the knowledge with or not, but the true problem forms in the most ordinary sections of the society, which eventually creates an opportunity for propaganda, conspiracy theories, rhetoric, and bogus.”
― Kambiz Shabankare

“Contextualism is only the flipside of logocentrism.”
― Jürgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays

“perhaps it only applies in the States, where emotional optimism is a constitutional duty”
― Julian Barnes

“Cults are not full of the strong, they are full of the weak. Hyperianism is all about strength. Hyperians are willing to be members of the “Cult of Reason” – because that is of course the supreme irony. Reason is the cult-buster. Every actual cult seeks to deprive you of your reason, and never apply clear and critical thinking to the cult. The Cult of Reason, by contrast, gives you the exact tools to see through everything, hence is the sole defense against cults. Is mathematics a cult? How could it be? It is nothing but the unfolding of reason and logic. The hilarious thing is that a group devoted to promoting reason and logic is regarded as a “cult” by cretins promoting innumerable versions of unreason and illogic. It is opposition to reason and logic – to rationalism – that constitutes cultic behavior.”
― Joe Dixon, Take Them to the Morgue

“A person with an “empty” scientific mind has a stronger tendency towards mysticism and irrationalism, although not all mystics and irrationalists start with this type of mind.”
― Elmar Hussein

“Reason, when understood ontologically, takes on an entirely different meaning from the one conventionally assigned to it. It takes on the extra “dimensions” of emotion, perception, intuition, desire and will. All of these are involved in the intricate nexus for providing sufficient reasons for actions. People who don’t understand our work keep reducing reason to one dimension, which means that our central point that reason is ontological and explains everything – including love, human error, insanity, and everything else that, according to the conventional treatment of reason, has nothing to do with reason – has completely escaped them. Reason, in our system, is both syntactic (structural) and semantic (meaningful). Its semantic aspect is what gives it the capacity to generate all the weird and wonderful things that average people do not associate with reason. They regard reason in strictly syntactic, machinelike terms. That is only one aspect of reason. It has many others.”
― Thomas Stark, Base Reality: Ultimate Existence

“I will content myself with observing that a religion which shrinks from intellectual inquiry and takes refuge in emotional affirmation can at best only be a weak and lopsided religion. For it does what Christianity has always been accused of doing; it treats the intellect, the reason, as something to be feared and distrusted; as if this, too, were not the gift of God. Not, indeed, that it would have the astronomers stop astronomizing or the biologists biologizing; it has nothing of the Tennessee spirit. On the contrary, it has much to say in praise of the scientist, and much in condemnation of a (quite imaginary) attitude of antipathy towards it on the part of the orthodox. But it blasphemes our divine gift of reason by treating it has if it had no say at all in the affairs of the soul; as if it were a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water to provide for our material needs. It is not allowed to enter into the discussion of religion, on the ground that religion is something too holy for it.”
― Ronald Knox, Caliban in Grub Street 1930 [Leather Bound]