“Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.”
Source: Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Chapter 2, “The Fifth Way” (p. 42)
“I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings
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Oscar Wilde 812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900Related quotes
“Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.”
Anatole France
(1844–1924) French writer
De toutes les définitions de l'homme, la plus mauvaise me paraît celle qui en fait un animal raisonnable.
Le Petit Pierre (1918), ch. XXXIII
“Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told.”
Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Often paraphrased as "It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."
1950s, Unpopular Essays (1950)
Context: Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
(1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters
19 December 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Context: We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will, therefore, always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in pursuit of it. No, we are complicated machines; and though we have one main spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometime stop that motion.
“Man is not a rational animal. He is only truly good or great when he acts from passion.”
Benjamin Disraeli
(1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Book 6, chapter 12.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)
Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
“Only to the rational animal is it given to follow voluntarily”
X, 28
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X
Context: Only to the rational animal is it given to follow voluntarily what happens; but simply to follow is a necessity imposed on all.
“Man is a rationalizing beast, if not a rational one.”
Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 14 (p. 142)