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

Most of us, it seems, have a strong inclination to accept the peculiarities of our social environment as if they were ‘natural’.

To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.

Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education.

Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.

When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.

I worry that the impulses driven by anti-intellectualism and anti-science play such a major part in shaping our political landscape today.

We do not ask ourselves what the ultimate ideas behind our civilization are that have brought us into this danger; we do not search for the human face behind the bewildering array of instruments that man has forged; in a word, we do not dare to be philosophical.

So often we’re seduced into believing that events control our lives and that our environment has shaped who we are today.

'Global warming' is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.