critical-thinking

If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most.

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.

...I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so. Mind you, this isn__ easy. We are so surrounded by tales of the supernatural, by the thunders of the powers to be who attempt with all their might to convince us of the existence of the supernatural, that the strongest among us may feel himself swaying.Something like that happened to me recently. In January 1990, I was lying in a hospital bed one afternoon and my dear wife, Janet, was not with me, but had gone home for a few hours to take care of some necessary chores. I was sleeping, and a finger jabbed at me. I woke, of course, and looked blearily to see who had awakened me and for what purpose.My room, however, had a lock, and the lock was firmly closed and there was a chain across the door too. Sunlight filled the room and it was clearly empty. So were the closet and the bathroom. Rationalist though I am, there was no way in which I could refrain from thinking that some supernatural influence had interfered to tell me that something had happened to Janet (naturally, my ultimate fear). I hesitated for a moment, trying to fight it off, and for anyone but Janet I would have. So I phoned her at home. She answered immediately and said she was perfectly well.Relieved, I hung up the phone and settled down to consider the problem of who or what had poked me. Was it simply a dream, a sensory hallucination? Perhaps, but it had seemed absolutely real. I considered.When I sleep alone, I often wrap myself up in my own arms. I also know that when I am sleeping lightly, my muscles twitch. I assumed my sleeping position and imagined my muscles twitching. It was clear that my own finger had poked into my shoulder and that was it.Now suppose that at the precise moment I had poked myself, Janet, through some utterly meaningless coincidence, had tripped and skinned her knee. And suppose I had called and she had groaned and said, "I just hurt myself".Would I have been able to resist the thought of supernatural interference? I hope so. However, I can't be sure. It's the world we live in. It would corrupt the strongest, and I don't imagine I'm in the strongest.

The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realize they can't do everything.

When students learn to wrestle with questions about purpose, audience, and genre, they develop a conceptual view of writing that has lifelong usefulness in any communicative context.

One of the chief values reading history, this is the author, is its capacity to "provoke renegade thoughts".

Think More Not Less.

It's ok to follow a leader with a strong positive agenda, but by no means should you forget to take your critical thinking with you.

I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument.

Most people do not actually know how to think for themselves, and unfortunately that prevents them from even knowing it.

To read narrowly and shallowly is to read from a place of ignorance.

The best way to destroy the decrepit is to build the glorious.

To learn that it's easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.

I believe that we are henceforth incapable of returning to an order of moral life which would take the form of a simple submission to commandments or to an alien or supreme will, even if this will were represented as divine. We must accept as a positive good the critique of ethics and religion that has been undertaken by the school of suspicion. From it we have learned to understand that the commandment that gives death, not life, is a product and projection of our own weakness.

Critical thinking is a necessary and vital skill".~R. Alan Woods [2012]

If everyone could learn how to read books properly and how to use them as effective tools for daily living, the facilities of colleges could easily go out of existence without any loss to society.' -From a speech by the president of Mount Holyoke College, as reported in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, May 13, 1938

Our brains tread a tightrope between learning too much from the past and incorporating too much new information from the present. The ability to walk this line _ to adjust to the demands of different environments and modalities _ is one of human cognition's most astonishing traits. Artificial intelligence has yet to come anywhere close.

On the way from mythology to logistics thought has lost the element of self-reflection and today machinery disables men even as it nurtures them.