Best of Rationality Quotes
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an "intellectual" — find out how he feels about astrology. —Robert Heinlein
Never underestimate the difficulty of changing false beliefs by facts. —Harvard economist Henry Rosovsky
It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear. —Nicholas Nassim Taleb
(i.e.: don't forget to put, in your utility functions, the damn appropriate weight of those highly-improbable-but-high-negative-impact tragedies!)
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all. —Nietzsche
Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned. —Avicenna (980–1037 AD)
What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so. —Mark Twain
You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. —Daniel Moyniham
A pair of the same species:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. —Yeats
The trouble with this world is that the ignorant are certain, and the intelligent are full of doubt. —George Bernard Shaw
Objectivity must be operationally defined as fair treatment of data, not absence of preference. —Stephen Jay Gould
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first. —Mark Twain
Love consists of overestimating the differences between one woman and another. —George Bernard Shaw
(OK, it's sexist. I admit it.)
The absence of alternatives clarifies your mind marvelously. —Kissinger
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. —Nietzsche
Emotions are the lubricants of reason. —Nicholas Nassim Taleb
I will repeat this point again until I get hoarse: a mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point. —Nicholas Nassim Taleb