Critical Thinking Quotes

“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.”
― Adrienne Rich

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. - Hitchens 3:16”
― Christopher Hitchens

“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

“There is a magnificent, beautiful, wonderful painting in front of you! It is intricate, detailed, a painstaking labor of devotion and love! The colors are like no other, they swim and leap, they trickle and embellish! And yet you choose to fixate your eyes on the small fly which has landed on it! Why do you do such a thing?”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them.”
― George Carlin

“The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it.

The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!”
― Brian Cox

“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, Sceptical Essays

“Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

“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, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer

“Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books

“everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death”
― Thomas Bernhard

“Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Most people do not have a problem with you thinking for yourself, as long as your conclusions are the same as or at least compatible with their beliefs.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We are all in favor of emotional intelligence. Intelligence can take emotion as a privileged counseling partner. However, it does not allow the emotion to take possession of us, besiege our mind, and subjugate our thinking. The emotion must regulate our thoughts, not manipulate nor substitute them. Our perception is only a biased picture of reality, and emotions are individual or provisional. Therefore, critical thinking and emotional thinking must go hand in hand. ("No monsters hide at this point" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Freedom of speech is unnecessary if the people to whom it is granted do not think for themselves.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.”
― Elon Musk

“I had a long talk with my dear Fat Mary that night, because I had many questions. Could someone actually be beaten to death by such a nun? Did Mother Rufina, the new Superior, know that Sister Clotilda was so cruel? Who let her work with children? Could nuns go to hell?
Fat Mary told me she didn’t know the answers to my questions, but she reminded me that it was her role to take my worries and burdens and keep them for me until a time when I could understand them.”
― Maria Nhambu, Africa's Child

“If chess has any relationship to film-making, it would be in the way it helps you develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives at a time when an impulsive decision seems very attractive.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth

“Let us not become victims of a crippling reasoning pattern. If we want to improve our decision-making and critical thinking, we must recognize our mental biases and be willing to overcome them. Let us avoid creating arguments to confirm pre-existing beliefs at all costs and invest in a ‘sunk cost fallacy.’ Better alight from a car out of control than drive it off the cliff. (“The infinite Wisdom of Meditation“)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.”
― John Cleese

“Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006]”
― Harper Lee

“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.”
― Charles Darwin, More Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol 2

“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, Animal Liberation

“Most people believe most of the things they believe only because they believe that most people believe them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Believe what you like, but don't believe everything you read without questioning it.”
― Pauline Baynes, Questionable Creatures: A Bestiary