For action to be rational, the beliefs on which it is based must themselves be well founded. In turn, this requirement is divided into two parts. On the one hand, the beliefs must be unbiased with respect to the information the agent possesses; on the other hand, he must gather an optimal amount of information.
Jon ElsterRelated topics
action agent gather requirement respect turn well optimal partsRelated quotes
Even though there's a massive amount of people of colour now living in Scotland...this country is 30 or 40 years behind any other English city in terms of racial attitudes and integration. There's no proper acknowledgement of the slave trade and how many Scottish cities were founded on money from that. Our children are just not taught that history.
Jackie Kay
There is but one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision.
John Ruskin
Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward and the hand may be a little child's.
George Eliot