#Critical Thinking Quotes

“If you follow the ways in which you were trained, which you may have inherited, for no other reason than this, you are illogical.”

“True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.”

“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

“Observing that the market was FREQUENTLY efficient, EMT Adherents went on to conclude incorrectly that it was ALWAYS efficient. The difference between these propositions is night and day.”

“A king can stand people's fighting but he can't last long if people start thinking.”

“I think you should read everything you can. In my case, by the age of 10, I'd read every book in the Omaha public library about investing, some twice.You need to fill your mind with various competing thoughts and decide which make sense.”

“You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you.”

“Don't be misled by History, or any other unreliable source.”

“In economics, you always want to ask 'And then what?'”

“Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.”

“The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.”

“Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.”

“Recollect your thoughts don't get caught up in the mix ,cause the media is full of dirty tricks.”

“The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”

“Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence. The implications of having so many people so incapable of confronting opposing arguments with anything besides ad hominem responses reach far.”

“Consider data without prejudice.”

“Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?”

“I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking. People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint.”

“If you want to be wrong then follow the masses.”

“The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.”

“Do not believe in an absurdity no matter who says it.”

“It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.”

“Newspapers should be read for the study of facts. They should not be allowed to kill the habit of independent thinking.”

“There is no doubt that our last state will be worse than our first, if we surrender our reason into somebody's keeping.”

“We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter -- exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place -- the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.”

“The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.”

“The manager who comes up with the right solution to the wrong problem is more dangerous than the manager who comes up with the wrong solution to the right problem.”

“No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.”

“To arrive at the definition of the problem he must begin by finding the 'critical factor'. This is the element (or elements) in the situation that has to be changed before anything else can be changed, moved, acted upon.”

“Never ask who's right. Start out by asking what is right. And you find that out by listening to dissenting, disagreeing opinions.”

“Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.”

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

“Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.”

“Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency.”

“It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.”

“When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.”

“You have a brain and mind of your own. Use it, and reach your own decisions”

“The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.”

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

“There is little hope for us until we become tough-minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft mindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.”

“Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.”

“One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself.”

“It"s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you"ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you"ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you"ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.”

“One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you're going east, and you will be walking east when you think you're going west.”

“Now, there are two different attitudes towards learning from others. One is the dogmatic attitude of transplanting everything, whether or not it is suited to our conditions. This is no good. The other attitude is to use our heads and learn those things that suit our conditions, that is, to absorb whatever experience is useful to us. That is the attitude we should adopt.”

“Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.”

“You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.”

“I think it's possible for me to approach the whole problem with a broader scope.When you look at something through an, an organizational eye, whether it's a, a religious organization, political organization, or a civic organization, if you look at it only through the eye of that organization, you see what the organization wants you to see. But you lose your ability to be objective.”

“Communists must always go into the why's and wherefore's of anything, use their own heads and carefully think over whether or not it corresponds to reality and is really well founded; on no account should they follow blindly and encourage slavishness.”

“Great intellects are skeptical.”