One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.

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The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

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'We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guild or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality'.

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we did not appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and complexity of the problems that made the Middle East such a jungle In the weeks immediately after the bombing, I believed the last thing we should do was turn tail and leave yet, the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics forced us to rethink our policy there.

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