Critical Thinking Quotes - Page 2

• 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.

  Alan Alda

  Change, Teaching, Humility

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• 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.

  Susan Cain

  Thinking, Ideas, Worry

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• The most fundamental attack on freedom is the attack on critical thinking skills. Comments display our universal failure to teach and value critical thinking, leaving the possibility open that both everything and nothing could be true.

  Travis Nichols

  Thinking, Skills, Leaving

  "Scratches in the Temple Wall". Interview with Paul Killebrew, logger.believermag.com. July 29, 2013.

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

  Naomi Wolf

  Kids, Thinking, Resilience

  "This pampered private school elite can only lead to US decline" by Naomi Wolf, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2012.

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• I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun.

  Scott Adams

  Funny, Stupidity, Dumb

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• When our children are old enough, and if we can afford to, we send them to college, where ... the point is to acquire the skills not of positive thinking but of critical thinking.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Children, Positive Thinking, College

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• If there was one life skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity

  Josh Lanyon

  Thinking, Objectivity, Skills

  Josh Lanyon (2011). “Come Unto These Yellow Sands”, p.21, Samhain Publishing

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• I don't want people to say, 'Something is true because Tyson says it is true.' That's not critical thinking.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Thinking, People, Want

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• The humanities prepare students to be good citizens and help them understand a complicated, interlocking world. The humanities teach us critical thinking, how to analyze arguments, and how to imagine life from the point of view of someone unlike yourself.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Thinking, Views, Humanity

  Source: www.neh.gov

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• When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

  Stephen King

  Kings, Book, Writing

  "Beyond cuts: the many roles of a writer's editor" by Nell Frizzell, www.theguardian.com. March 12, 2014.

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• 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.

  Howard Zinn

  Lying, Past, Government

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• The Santa myth is one of the most effective means ever devised for intimidating children, eroding their self- esteem, twisting their behavior, warping their values, and slowing their development of critical thinking skills.

  Tom Flynn

  Children, Self Esteem, Mean

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• Our minds are lazier than our bodies.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Retirement, Thinking, Mind

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• The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Clever, Numbers, Judging

  1779 Mr Puff.The Critic, act 1, sc.2.

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• If you're going to have a kid who engages in critical thinking, you're not going to shut them down when they ask a question. You're not going to settle for "because." You're going to encourage them to ask more. And you want them to understand how other people think.

  Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

  Kids, Thinking, People

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

  Thomas Bernhard

  Thinking, Ridiculous, Ifs

  Thomas Bernhard (2010). “The Loser: A Novel”, p.189, Vintage

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• It is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects.

  Anita Sarkeesian

  Inspirational, Media, Criticism

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

  Miguel Angel Ruiz

  Believe, Agreement, Belief

  "The Four Agreements". Book by Miguel Angel Ruiz, 1997.

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• 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.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, Opinion, Conviction

  Sceptical Essays "Introduction: On the Value of Skepticism" (1961)

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• Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.

  Peter Singer

  Philosophy, Believe, Thinking

  Peter Singer (1986). “Applied Ethics”, p.225, Oxford University Press, USA

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• 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.

  Bell Hooks

  Country, Thinking, Self

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• 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.

  Bell Hooks

  Differences, Support, Community

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

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Devil, Poet, Apostles

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• There is no genuine democracy without an informed public. While there are no guarantees that a critical education will prompt individuals to contest various forms of oppression and violence, it is clear that in the absence of a formative democratic culture, critical thinking will increasingly be trumped by anti-intellectualism, and walls and war will become the only means to resolve global challenges.

  Henry Giroux

  Wall, War, Mean

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• My focus has always been on the work - that work being critical thinking and writing. I am always doing that. That's where I am, wherever I am. Critical thinking and writing as my heartbeat.

  Bell Hooks

  Writing, Thinking, Focus

  "The BK Nation INTERVIEW with bell hooks". Interview with Kevin Powell, bknation.org. February 28, 2014.

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