Quotes about critical-thinking

time is the best teacher patience is the best lesson

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

The educated don't get that way by memorizing facts they get that way by respecting them.

A poet is not an apostle he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

It's important to realize that sometimes the information you need is hidden behind the information available.

In a world where critical thinking skills are almost wholly absent, repetition effectively leapfrogs the cognitive portion of the brain. It helps something get processed as truth. We used to call it unsubstantiated buy-in. Belief without evidence. It only works in a society where thinking for one's self is discouraged. That's how we lost our country.

Driving a car provides a person with a rush of dopamine in the brain, which hormonal induced salience spurs modalities of creative and critical thinking regarding philosophical concepts such as truth, logical necessity, possibility, impossibility, chance, and contingency.

...when we cease asking questions, when we stop being self-critical, and when we no longer engage with others, then we surrender our ability to grow--to progress. Let's begin the conversation.

The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.

Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.

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

As every good marxist already knows, the ideological shift toward a terminally optimistic humanism was vital to the rise of bourgeoisie, and the decline of aristocracy.

Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable.

Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.

We may not yet know the right way to go, but we should at least stop going in the wrong direction.

When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is 'being offended'.

Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.

Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all ref

There is a magnificent, beautiful, wonderful painting in front of you! It is intricate, detailed, a painstaking labor of devotion and love! The colors are like no other, they swim and leap, they trickle and embellish! And yet you choose to fixate your eyes on the small fly which has landed on it! Why do you do such a thing?

Instead of complaining, discover ways, tactics and tricks on how to reach out to people

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. - Hitchens 3:16

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

We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language.

The IGAD-Plus's compromise peace agreement is probably pregnant with a noisy, perhaps thunderous baby.

All your thoughts, imagination, feelings, emotions and sensation are part of the mechanical process that can be understood, at the state of self-realization.

If you don't understand how the world works, then everything is a mystery to you. If everything is magical and mysterious, then you really don't work on logic anymore. Then, everything is all about belief.

Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas—like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male “honor” that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls—you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and conseq

Certainly we can say that the pace of modern life, increased and supported by our technology in general and our personal electronics in particular, has resulted in a short attention span and an addiction to the influx of information. A mind so conditioned has little opportunity to think critically, and even less chance to experience life deeply by being in the present moment. A complex life with complicated activities, relationships and commitments implies a reflexive busy-ness that supplants tr

For me, I think the greatest achievements of science is to allow humanity to realize that our world is comprehensible. Through science, rational thinking, we can understand how the universe works.

Losing your job releases you to think effectively and make rational decisions

You need to answer questions on where, when and what to do

Sunglasses are more useful to a blind man than freedom of speech is to a man who does not think for himself.

...Society needs to open its collective mind to all ideas and ideologies. It needs to give its people the chance to listen to the opinions of others, and then examine them critically instead of rejecting them prematurely. Such a creative dialogue based on positive critical thinking can enhance and develop ideas.

You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all.

If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant pastSecurity in human systems we're told will always always lastEmotions are the sail and blind faith is the mastWithout the breath of real freedom we're getting nowhere

Taking the Right Decision in any situation only requires TWO major ingredients:Critical Thinking and Grace.Critical Thinking is like 'Works' and Grace is like 'Faith'. So if "Faith without Works is dead," then same, I believe, goes for Works without Faith.Like the two sides of a coin, one without the other just won't make any sense. And if the coin ever has a third side, it will never be 'Emotions' or 'Sentiments' because they both have zero IQ.

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

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

Advanced technology does not always promise a more intelligent civilization. On the contrary, the more the common people rely on technology to do their thinking and solving for them, the less practice there is left for their own brains.

Thought assists memory in enabling it to order the material it has assembled. So that in a systematically ordered memory every idea is individually followed by all conclusions it entails.

All great people had critics but they still believe in the beauty of their dreams, fully persuaded to stay focused and determined for the realisationof their dreams.

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

Think independently and critically, but never forget to think with understanding and love.

The work of art always requires us to adapt to it—and in this manner can be distinguished from escapism or shallow entertainment, which instead aims to adapt to the audience, to give the public exactly what it wants. We can tell that we are encountering a real work of art by the degree to which it resists subjectivity.

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

It takes critical thinking to frame the right problem and empathetic thinking to address the correct need.

To think critically, it is first maturing and distancing a bit from self, no matter what level one lives on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Most people believe most of the things they believe only because they believe that most people believe them.

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality.

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the informati

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.

Both [P. T.] Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The remark has worldwide application. But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.

I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

For the most part, people strenuously resist any redefinition of morality, because it shakes them to the very core of their being to think that in pursuing virtue they may have been feeding vice, or in fighting vice they may have in fact been fighting virtue.

Religion has the capacity to silence critical thinking and create blindness in entire groups of people. It can infect the minds of followers so completely as to allow the most egregious sexual acts against children and others to go unchallenged for centuries.

Experience cannot beat logic, and interpretations of observational evidence which are not in line with the laws of logical reasoning are no refutation of these but the sign of a muddled mind (or would one accept someone’s observational report that he had seen a bird that was red and non-red all over at the same time as a refutation of the law of contradiction rather than the pronouncement of an idiot?).

We hear so often that we must read but what is more important and often not advised is to always think and question what we read.Reading, retaining and repeating is often called education. Wisdom is when we can read, question, adapt and apply what is relevant to the time and space in which we exist.

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined?...Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on th

Teach the child how to think and not what to think by equipping him with the weapons of Knowledge and Discernment.

Teach the child how to think and not what to think by equipping him with the armor of Discernment and the sword of Knowledge.

Scientists are aware that all the lab-rat tests in the world, once compiled, can tell us only how lab rats act when tested, and that is how we must begin to view school: all that you can learn in a school classroom is what goes on inside a school classroom.

Freedom of speech is unnecessary if the people to whom it is granted do not think for themselves.

The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.

The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!

What Is A Belief?

A definition of a term indicates its original meaning from the language the person reads, writes and speaks in daily life settings. However, an intellectual persons interpretation and perspective can modify its context so he or she can sound creative and compelling when he or she educates his or her audience by forming a connection with a particular vocabulary word scholars/ innovative thinkers would use specifically in a particular field of study.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.

Every genuinely new technology has a genuinely new way of breaking – and every now and then, those malfunctions open a new door to the adjacent possible. Sometimes the way a new technology breaks is almost as interesting as the way it works.

Good art is always dangerous, always open-ended. Once you put it out in the world you lose control of it; people will fit it into their minds in all sorts of different ways.

I think the influence of books is neither direct and more predictable. Books themselves are too unruly, and so are readers.

Even if a poem is beautiful and memorable, it’s not like an advertising jingle or propaganda, which attempt to convince and control. Poems seek to confuse, disabuse, enlarge understanding, and make people ask questions and think for themselves.

Treat your mind like a museum, not a warehouse

The more intense the belief, the less likely that reason and evidence can dislodge it.

But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.

Reflective learning provokes critical thinking, enabling us to pose relevant questions, revealing the profound oceans of ignorance that surround even the most learned scholars in our fields of modern knowledge, invoking us to be active participants in the crusade for equality, representation, and social justice.

One of the most important things one can do in life is to brutally question every single thing you are taught.

Some parents whenever their children have an independent thought they wrap them up in warm ignorance and send them to bed

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble.If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old per

A question is far more subversive, biblically, than a statement.

It takes those who uses telescope of faith to catch a spiritual vision. To see the invisible things of the Spirit you need the eyes of faith. Faith sees beyond the physical eyes. Live and walk by faith. Christianity is a faith walk. The substance and evidence is seen only with the spiritual eyes.

A true survivor is someone who, after 12+ years of being schooled, remains independent in their thinking.

If he had gone to the old school, he was by no means old-school.

The search to know has always been characterized by the need to doubt, the need to be critical, including the need to be self-critical.

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth.Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error,for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.Let no man fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it;for doubt is a testing of belief.The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing;For truth, if it b

Social conditioning, accompanied by moral and mental constraints, now serve to render the mediocre mind nearly incapable of unbiased assessment.

When you go with first principles, a giant light goes off in what you think is a city and turns out to be an insane asylum.

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

Critical thinking is a necessary and vital skill".~R. Alan Woods [2012]

Critical Thinking has the potential to be a deeply creative process.

On the way from mythology to logistics thought has lost the element of self-reflection and today machinery disables men even as it nurtures them.

Our brains tread a tightrope between learning too much from the past and incorporating too much new information from the present. The ability to walk this line – to adjust to the demands of different environments and modalities – is one of human cognition's most astonishing traits. Artificial intelligence has yet to come anywhere close.

If everyone could learn how to read books properly and how to use them as effective tools for daily living, the facilities of colleges could easily go out of existence without any loss to society.' -From a speech by the president of Mount Holyoke College, as reported in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, May 13, 1938

No feeling is wrong. You have the right to your feelings. However, you do not need to wallow in them, and you do not have the right to act them out. The world hasn't suddenly become your punching bag or litter tray.

Calling a book "Young Adult" is just a fancy way of saying the book is censored. People used to say they like to read books about romance, true crime, comedy, horror or science fiction. But these days people simply say they like to read "Young Adult" books. As if that were a topic. But that's the thing: Young Adult is not a topic, it's a level of censorship. Saying "I like Young Adult books" is just another way of saying "I like books that have been dumbed down for children. I like books with no

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

SOSTRATUS: Observe then your injustice! You punish us who are but the slaves of Clotho's bidding, and reward these, who do but minister to another's beneficence. For it will never be said that it was in our power to gainsay the irresistible ordinances of Fate?MINOS: Ah, Sostratus; look closely enough, and you will find plenty of inconsistencies besides these. However, I see you are no common pirate, but a philosopher in your way; so much you have gained by your questions. Let him go, Hermes; he

P33- Oppression is domesticating. Gravest obstacle to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings consciousness.