“The fact that the House of Lords has many irrational features is not, in itself, fatal in British eyes for we have a capacity for making the irrational work, and if a thing works, we tend to like it, or at any rate to put up with it.”

Government and Parliament: A Survey from the Inside (Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 194

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The fact that the House of Lords has many irrational features is not, in itself, fatal in British eyes for we have a ca…" by Herbert Morrison?

Herbert Morrison10

British Labour politician 1888–1965

Related quotes

“Most people don’t think I’m rational. They’re too busy featuring their hurt. They find it irrational not to feature your hurt. That’s how fucked up they are.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Oui interview (1979)

“Our lives are more like fragmentary dreams than the enactments of conscious selves. We control very little of what we most care about; many of our most fateful decisions are made unbeknownst to ourselves. Yet we insist that mankind can achieve what we cannot: conscious mastery of its existence. This is the creed of those who have given up an irrational belief in God for an irrational faith in mankind.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: At the Masked Ball (p. 38)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“We have become so engrossed in the work of the Lord that we have forgotten the Lord of the work.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

As quoted in The Banner, Dec. 4, 1970, p. 2.

“We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"Avatars of the Tortoise" ["Avatares de la tortuga"]
Discussion (1932)

“There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or, in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't. For instance, the Baudelaire orphans have a fear of Count Olaf, which makes perfect sense, because he is an evil man who wants to destroy them. But if they were afraid of lemon meringue pie, this would be an irrational fear, because lemon meringue pie is delicious and would never hurt a soul. Being afraid of a monster under the bed is perfectly rational, because there may in fact be a monster under your bed at any time, ready to eat you all up, but a fear of realtors is an irrational fear. Realtors, as I'm sure you know, are people who assist in the buying and selling of houses. Besides occasionally wearing an ugly yellow coat, the worst a realtor can do to you is show you a house that you find ugly, so it is completely irrational to be terrified of them. -Lemony Snicket”

Daniel Handler book The Wide Window

The Wide Window (2000)

“These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

“The suppression of liberty is always likely to be irrational.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter IV, Section 33, p. 210

“Your trust in rationality makes you irrational.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

“Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

“Gail has said in interviews that one of the things that makes our relationship work is the fact that we hardly ever get to talk to each other.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989)

“The fact that the House of Lords has many irrational features is not, in itself, fatal in British eyes for we have a capacity for making the irrational work, and if a thing works, we tend to like it, or at any rate to put up with it.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Herbert Morrison10

Related quotes

Related topics