phaedrus

I find this paper to be a good resource to think about this subject: https://motherjones.com/files/emotional_dog_and_rational_tail.pdf

Weakly related epiphany: Hannibal Lector is the original prototype of an intelligence-in-a-box wanting to be let out, in "The Silence of the Lambs"

‎"We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself." --Chris Mooney

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW6yeMj3ORE

This reminds me of "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -- Aristotle

To me, this uses "educated" in the sense it ought to be meant.

Learned helplessness, perhaps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/first-person-plural/7055/

‎"Fine phrases are the last resource of those who have run out of arguments." -- Peter Singer

http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/12/our-secret-attitude-changes.php

"If anyone is going to ask for a real-world example of someone who does not know how a light switch works, I can't provide one off the top of my head, but I'd suggest looking at this, which is even more dreadful."

--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV9gRFv5Kgc

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." --- Aristotle

"All of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them."

---George Eliot, "Middlemarch"

I just realized today why they chose the name "GATTACA" for the eponymous movie.

"He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth." -- Goethe

"We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance" - John Archibald Wheeler

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." -- Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

(This is not necessarily a rationalist quote, but yet, it kinda is :))

"Every conviction is a prison" ---- Nietzsche

Thanks RobinZ, The full quote is "Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise, and everything precise is so remote from everything that we normally think, that you cannot for a moment suppose that is what we really mean when we say what we think."

But the partial quote is much more crisp.

"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise"

• Bertrand Russell, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (Part of the full sentence)

"I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER."

Groucho Marx