We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant. He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way
Interpretation
The quote criticizes Prince Charles' susceptibility to various fads and beliefs, suggesting he lacks critical thinking.
Christopher Hitchens uses this quote to highlight Prince Charles' tendency to be influenced by unscientific ideas and trends, such as homeopathy and the notion that talking to plants can aid their growth. It serves as a commentary on the importance of skepticism and the danger of accepting ideas without inquiry, particularly from someone in a position of privilege and authority.
In practice
In a discussion about critical thinking, one could use this quote to illustrate the dangers of accepting unproven ideas.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common.
Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.
It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.
I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. Simply put - I think, therefore I am
Where once the student was taught that the unexamined life was not worth living, he is now taught that the profitably lived life is not worth examining.
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