50 Quotes Tagged: critical-thinking

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.

It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.

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

I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible [...] The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgement should always be placed foremost.

As long as men did nothing except to render their fellows wretched; as long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and helpless, God maintained the strictest and most heartless neutrality. But when some honest man, some great and tender soul expressed a doubt as to the truth of the Scriptures, or prayed to the wrong God, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real God leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering flesh tore his wretched soul.

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 consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims — especially women and girls.

Los perros, de cierto, ladran a quien no conocen

"Both <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/201036.Barnum" rel="nofollow noopener" title="Barnum">Barnum</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7805.H__L__Mencken" rel="nofollow noopener" title="H. L. Mencken">H. L. Mencken</a> 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."

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.

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.

No idea is really bad, unless we are uncritical. What is really bad is to have no idea at all.

¿No te parece suficientemente bien dicho que no hay que respetar todas las opiniones de los hombres, sino unas sí y otras no; ni todas las de todos, sino las de uno sí y no las de otros? De ser así, ¿no serán las buenas precisamente las de los sensatos, y las malas las de los insensatos?

Meras creencias lo que el más acreditado conoce y custodia

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

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 reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.