Critical-thinking Quotes

There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.

One of the major differences I see in the political climate today is that there is less collective s...

The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinio...

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most sk...

Both [P. T.] Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one e...

But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily co...

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new ...

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, d...

I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words ...

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will...

Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went...

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher...

Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.

I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we con...

The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.

Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die.

A great truth wants to be criticized not idolized

Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be s...

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choic...

Good art is always dangerous, always open-ended. Once you put it out in the world you lose control o...

Experience cannot beat logic, and interpretations of observational evidence which are not in line wi...

So what? Why should an a priori proof of the libertarian property theory make any difference? Why no...

History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easi...

...I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so. Mind you, this i...

For me, I think the greatest achievements of science is to allow humanity to realize that our world ...

The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely d...

You have a brain and mind of your own. Use it, and reach your own decisions.

Watch a man--say, a politician--being interviewed on television, an you are observing a demonstratio...

To learn that it's easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for you...

I believe that we are henceforth incapable of returning to an order of moral life which would take t...

P33- Oppression is domesticating. Gravest obstacle to the achievement of liberation is that oppressi...

If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most.

The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people,...

Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and care...

Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence,...

Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly M...

If chess has any relationship to film-making, it would be in the way it helps you develop patience a...

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done,...

If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant pastSecurity in human systems we're told will always...

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for yo...

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.