Best 183 quotes in «critical thinking quotes» category

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

...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.

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

...something disturbing has happened over the last few decades. The work of the U.S. Civil Service is the same: serving America. Yet today, although the work is still honorable, it is no longer honored.

The day he is out of baseball will be the day he starts to think about what comes next. By then, it may be too late.

Space reserved for being serious is hard to come by in a modern society, whose chief model of a public space is the mega-store (which may also be an airport or a museum).

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.

The comprehensive mind is always dialectical.

The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators ... They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens.

The difference between you and me is that you cannot live without dogmatic truth, whereas I cannot live with it. For you there must be a domain of thought that is consistent with this truth, and therefore, in which you must blindly believe. Contrariwise, for me there can not be an area which can not be questioned and which can not be subjected to critical analysis.

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.

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

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

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

(The historian) "was able to disapprove without being astonished. She could reject and still understand.

The first step is developing an open and critical mind, taking the doctrines that are standard and questioning them. Is the United Stated dedicated to democracy? Is Iran the greatest threat to world peace? Do we have a market system? Does the public relations industry try to promote choices or to restrict them? Anything you look at, every one of these things, you have to ask yourself: Is this true? A pretty good criterion is that if some doctrine is widely accepted without qualification, it's probably flawed.

The phrase “fake news” sounds too playful, too much like a schoolchild faking illness to get out of a test. These euphemisms obscure the fact that the sex-slave story is an out-and-out lie. The people who wrote it knew that it wasn’t true. There are not two sides to a story when one side is a lie. Journalists—and the rest of us—must stop giving equal time to things that don’t have a fact-based opposing side. Two sides to a story exist when evidence exists on both sides of a position. Then, reasonable people may disagree about how to weigh that evidence and what conclusion to form from it. Everyone, of course, is entitled to their own opinions. But they are not entitled to their own facts. Lies are an absence of facts and, in many cases, a direct contradiction of them.

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

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

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

(...)the question of the Jews has come to the fore, but like other questions which lend themselves to prejudice, efforts will be made to hush it up as impolitic for open discussion. If, however, experience has taught us anything it is that questions thus suppressed will sooner or later break out in undesirable and unprofitable forms.

The problem with the evangelical homeschool movement was not their desire to educate their children at home, or in private religious schools, but the evangelical impulse to "protect" children from ideas that might lead them to "question" and to keep them cloistered in what amounted to a series of one-family gated communities.

There is a current perception is that science has overtaken Philosophy and in effect rendered Philosophy irrelevant. Science, when sufficiently abstracted, approaches Philosophy in seeking questions we are unaware exist, though from a direction that is based on current measurable knowledge. Philosophy should approach the undiscovered without relying on our current perception of baseline knowledge. Unfortunately, Philosophy has lost significant respect as a critical component of progress and as such has become virtually stagnant with very few significant big ideas or thinkers.

There are never just two choices. That is a lie to keep you from thinking too deeply.

There exists in society a very special class of persons that I have always referred to as the Believers. These are folks who have chosen to accept a certain religion, philosophy, theory, idea or notion and cling to that belief regardless of any evidence that might, for anyone else, bring it into doubt. They are the ones who encourage and support the fanatics and the frauds of any given age. No amount of evidence, no matter how strong, will bring them any enlightenment. They are the sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered, and who will battle fiercely to preserve their right to be victimized… patent offices handle an endless succession of inventors who still produce perpetual-motion machines that don't work, but no number of idle flywheels will convince these zealots of their folly; dozens of these patent applications flow in every year. In ashrams all over the world, hopping devotees of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi will never abandon their goal of blissful levitation of their bodies by mind power, despite bruises and sprains aplenty suffered as they bounce about on gym mats like demented (though smiling) frogs, trying to get airborne. Absolutely nothing will discourage them.

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.

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 way most people use their minds is analogous to an ambulance that is used only as an umbrella.

The way most people use and are used by their minds gives substance to the belief that we are barely evolved apes.

The way to eliminate the harm caused by stereotypes is to teach our children to recognize false stereotypes, to be empathetic, and to be skeptical. We need to promote these critical-thinking skills in addition to instilling the best values we know. Skepticism, the heart of the scientific method, is the only way we know how to ferret out fact from fiction.

The whole idea of a democratic application of skepticism is that everyone should have the essential tools to effectively and constructively evaluate claims to knowledge.

This country has a UFO problem, after all. You might not have been aware we have one, or thought about it in these terms, but we do have a UFO problem: namely, we don't seem to understand what UFO really means. So here it is: a UFO is an unidentified flying object. So any time we see some object flying in the sky that we can't positively identify, we've seen a UFO. But in the same way the words paranormal and supernatural have been conflated, we now equate UFO with alien spacecraft. How this came to be is easily understandable. If we've learned one thing in this book already, people don't like the unknown very much. And so, if we believe we're being visited by other civilizations, we read the piles of books and articles on unexplained lights in the sky, then fill in the massive gaps—with wild tales of alien races, interstellar technology, and government conspiracies. If we don't believe, we hear someone saw an unexplained light in the sky and assume, first, that he's claiming to have seen E.T. Then we figure what he really saw was an airplane, Venus, swamp gas, or a helicopter, and he must be a bit foolish—maybe even a UFO nut. Then we laugh.

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.

The worst thing about logic - it is not democratic. Logic wears an autocratic mask. No compromises are made there for things are binary. Only intellectual standards democratise it to make it human. That is why you joined rationality with character. Rationality is autocratic - what is wrong does not live for long. Wrong facts, theories, and conclusions die - useless to apply in spite of their unlimited supply.

Thinking (especially, critical) is an energy-sapping, calorie-sapping process! Now, since time immemorial, calories have been considered a premium for survival, and therefore, we are always in a calorie-storage mode! No wonder, there’s dumb everywhere around you! And followers too! People will leave the thinking to you and will blindly follow you... Also, therefore the argument ‘that it must be true because most people say it’, doesn’t hold much water!

Think More Not Less.

tinha mania de chamar de "esquisito" tudo o que estava além da própria compreensão, vivendo assim cercado por uma verdadeira legião de "esquisitices

[T]hough in all practical matters it is indispensable, either always or mostly, to follow custom, to do what is generally done, in theoretical matters it is simply untrue. In practical matters there is a right of the first occupant: what is established must be respected. In theoretical matters this cannot be. Differently stated: The rule of practice is 'let sleeping dogs lie,' do not disturb the established. In theoretical matters the rule is 'do not let sleeping dogs lie.' Therefore, we cannot defer to precedent . . . .

time is the best teacher; patience is the best lesson

To some people independent thought is heresy and critical thought blasphemy

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

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

To some people critical thinking means you mustn't be critical of them only others

To some people original thought is a medical condition that leads to migraines

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.

Trust your instincts, know what you want, and believe in your ability to achieve it. Rules and conventions are important for schools, businesses, and society in general, but you should never follow them blindly.

Treat your mind like a museum, not a warehouse

Vi har noen rettigheter, plikter og verdier vi tar som en selvfølge. Men også selvfølgelighetene må begrunnes og forsvares. De oppleste og vedtatte sannhetene har godt av å bli utfordret, ikke minst for å gi oss anledning til å lese dem opp og vedta dem på nytt.

We had a class called Theory of Knowledge, taught by a Catholic family man we later found out was strongly attracted to little boys… so I guess the point of the class was you don’t know shit. The past few years, I found out that there’s Neurogenesis, which means we *do* make new brain cells. And I found out about Epigenetics, which basically means Lamarck was more right than Darwin… so that does away with a lot of shit I still remember from science classes from not too long ago. I read books that show the Jews did 911 (not Osama) and a guy named McPherson keeps telling us that we’re all gonna die in a few years anyway. Make each day count…

Watch a man--say, a politician--being interviewed on television, an you are observing a demonstration of what both he and his interrogators learned in school: all questions have answers, and it is a good thing to give an answer even if there is none to give, even if you don't understand the question, even if the question contains erroneous assumptions, even if you are ignorant of the facts required to answer. Have you ever heard a man being interviewed say, "I don't have the faintest idea," or "I don't know enough even to guess," or "I have been asked that question before, but all my answers to it seem to be wrong?" One does not "blame" men, especially if they are politicians, for providing instant answers to all questions. The public requires that they do, since the public has learned that instant answer giving is the most important sign of an educated man.