Best of Rationality Quotes

Upon his death man must leave everything behind ... and depart forever from the world he has known. He must of necessity go to that foul land of death, a fact which makes death the most sorrowful of all events. ... Some foreign doctrines, however, teach that death should not be regarded as profoundly sorrowful. ... These are all gross deceptions contrary to human sentiment and fundamental truths. Not to be happy over happy events, not to be saddened by sorrowful events, not to show surprise at astonishing events, in a word, to consider it proper not to be moved by whatever happens, are all foreign types of deception and falsehood. They are contrary to human nature and extremely repugnant to me.

-- Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) - quoted from Blocker, Japanese Philosophy, p. 109

Motoori was as far as you can get from being a rationalist but this quote was so Yudkowskian that I felt it belonged here.

We live in a world where it has become "politically correct" to avoid absolutes. Many want all religions to be given the same honor, and all gods regarded as equally true and equally fictitious. But take these same people, who want fuzzy, all-inclusive thinking in spiritual matters, and put them on an airplane. You will find they insist on a very dogmatic, intolerant pilot who will stay on the "straight and narrow" glidepath so their life will not come to a violent end short of the runway. They want no fuzzy thinking here!

-- Jack T. Chick

If I close my mind in fear, please pry it open.

-- Metallica

Those creatures, which by their original make are so constituted, that their desires and their duty always necessarily coincide, can't, I think, be said to have any claim to a reward: whereas those who are surrounded with difficulty and temptation, and who are obliged to deny themselves and submit to great inconveniences that they may maintain their integrity, if notwithstanding this, they do behave uprightly, seem on this account to have an equitable claim to it.

-- Thomas Bayes

(The first type of entity sounds like a properly designed FAI - there is certainly no need to feed it any rewards, it does what it does because that's what it wants to do. The second type of entity sounds like some sort of UFAI with tacked on 'safety' measures. It might make sense to reward it with some paperclips every day it manages not to destroy humanity. Pretty sure this was not where Bayes was going with this, though.)