Critical Thinking Quotes

...this cryptic game of hide-and-seek is what makes it one of the greatest historical mysteries. So many of the symbols can be interpreted in so many different ways, there's always the possibility that all we're really looking at is a blank slate onto which anything can be read.

~ Brad Meltzer

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 big words and no difficult abstract concepts. Nothing that will strain my brain. People like to brag that they used to start reading at an early age, as if that were a badge of honor, a sign of intelligence. Nobody brags about when they started to watch TV. But books are being dumbed down so much these days, it's really not a sign of great intelligence when you're a grown up and you struggle your way through Green Eggs and Ham.

~ Oliver Markus

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 shall not be punished after that. But mind, Sostratus, you must not put it into other people's heads to ask questions of this kind.

~ Lucian Of Samosata

One of the major differences I see in the political climate today is that there is less collective support for coming to critical consciousness – in communities, in institutions, among friends.

~ Bell Hooks

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.

~ Paulo Freire

No special academic expertise is required for insight into the Orwellian use of language, only clear thinking and common sense.

~ Peter Slezak

The secret to discovery is to never believe existing facts.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Oversimplifying is the first grave mistake we make when confronted by complexity; overconfidence is the second. And there is a third: based on our overconfidence in our oversimplified conclusions, we overreact.

~ Ted Cadsby

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.

~ Stefan Molyneux

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

~ Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau

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.

~ Anna Valdiserri

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

~ Christopher Hitchens

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

~ Pearl Zhu

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.

~ Theodor W. Adorno

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.

~ Eli Pariser

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

~ Francis Beauchesne Thornton

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

~ R. Alan Woods

I believe that we are henceforth incapable of returning to an order of moral life which would take the form of a simple submission to commandments or to an alien or supreme will, even if this will were represented as divine. We must accept as a positive good the critique of ethics and religion that has been undertaken by the school of suspicion. From it we have learned to understand that the commandment that gives death, not life, is a product and projection of our own weakness.

~ Paul Ricœur

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

~ Neil Degrasse Tyson

The best way to destroy the decrepit is to build the glorious.

~ Stefan Molyneux

To read narrowly and shallowly is to read from a place of ignorance.

~ Roxane Gay

Most people do not actually know how to think for themselves, and unfortunately that prevents them from even knowing it.

~ Bryant Mcgill

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

~ Christopher Hitchens

It's ok to follow a leader with a strong positive agenda, but by no means should you forget to take your critical thinking with you.

~ Hafiz

Think More Not Less.

~ Jelani Payne

One of the chief values reading history, this is the author, is its capacity to provoke renegade thoughts.

~ Andrew Roberts

When students learn to wrestle with questions about purpose, audience, and genre, they develop a conceptual view of writing that has lifelong usefulness in any communicative context.

~ John C. Bean

The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realize they can't do everything.

~ Kevin Deyoung

...I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so. Mind you, this isn’t easy. We are so surrounded by tales of the supernatural, by the thunders of the powers to be who attempt with all their might to convince us of the existence of the supernatural, that the strongest among us may feel himself swaying.Something like that happened to me recently. In January 1990, I was lying in a hospital bed one afternoon and my dear wife, Janet, was not with me, but had gone home for a few hours to take care of some necessary chores. I was sleeping, and a finger jabbed at me. I woke, of course, and looked blearily to see who had awakened me and for what purpose.My room, however, had a lock, and the lock was firmly closed and there was a chain across the door too. Sunlight filled the room and it was clearly empty. So were the closet and the bathroom. Rationalist though I am, there was no way in which I could refrain from thinking that some supernatural influence had interfered to tell me that something had happened to Janet (naturally, my ultimate fear). I hesitated for a moment, trying to fight it off, and for anyone but Janet I would have. So I phoned her at home. She answered immediately and said she was perfectly well.Relieved, I hung up the phone and settled down to consider the problem of who or what had poked me. Was it simply a dream, a sensory hallucination? Perhaps, but it had seemed absolutely real. I considered.When I sleep alone, I often wrap myself up in my own arms. I also know that when I am sleeping lightly, my muscles twitch. I assumed my sleeping position and imagined my muscles twitching. It was clear that my own finger had poked into my shoulder and that was it.Now suppose that at the precise moment I had poked myself, Janet, through some utterly meaningless coincidence, had tripped and skinned her knee. And suppose I had called and she had groaned and said, I just hurt myself.Would I have been able to resist the thought of supernatural interference? I hope so. However, I can't be sure. It's the world we live in. It would corrupt the strongest, and I don't imagine I'm in the strongest.

~ Isaac Asimov

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

~ Charles Darwin

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

~ Penn Jillette

The goal of intellectual life should be to see and understand what is true, not merely to adhere to a prevailing orthodoxy.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

So what? Why should an a priori proof of the libertarian property theory make any difference? Why not engage in aggression anyway?” Why indeed?! But then, why should the proof that 1+1=2 make any difference? One certainly can still act on the belief that 1+1=3. The obvious answer is “because a propositional justification exists for doing one thing, but not for doing another.” But why should we be reasonable, is the next come-back. Again, the answer is obvious. For one, because it would be impossible to argue against it; and further, because the proponent raising this question would already affirm the use of reason in his act of questioning it. This still might not suffice and everyone knows that it would not, for even if the libertarian ethic and argumentative reasoning must be regarded as ultimately justified, this still does not preclude that people will act on the basis of unjustified beliefs either because they don’t know, they don’t care, or they prefer not to know. I fail to see why this should be surprising or make the proof somehow defective.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

A man goes to a foreign country and kills somebody who's not aggressing against him; in a Hawaiian shirt he's a criminal, in a green costume he's a hero who gets a parade and a pension. So that, as a culture, we remain in a state of moral insanity. To point out these contradictions to people in society is to be labeled insane. This is how insane society remains, that anybody who points out logical opposites in the most essential human topic of ethics, is considered to be insane.

~ Stefan Molyneux

If chess has any relationship to film-making, it would be in the way it helps you develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives at a time when an impulsive decision seems very attractive.

~ Stanley Kubrick

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.

~ Prince Akwarandu

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 person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress.On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful as from the worthless ones.

~ Carl Sagan

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

~ Os Guinness

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

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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.

~ Gerhard Casper