Quotes on Critical Thinking

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.

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.

Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system.

Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

Learn to use your brain power. Critical thinking is the key to creative problem solving in business.

To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong.

I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they're good talkers, but they don't have good ideas. It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They're valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.

A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

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.

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

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.