Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

There’s an urgent need to stop reacting to each immediate vexing issue in isolation. Such response often creates unanticipated second-order effects and even more problems for us.

I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

I think war is so incredibly backward, and I don’t think it’s intelligent, and it’s not sane. So why would you want to support it?

Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I’m the only president you’ve got.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

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.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

One of the first duties of a Scout is obedience to authority. He must obey his orders in the first place and put his own amusement or desires in the second.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Dr. Karel Culik is an outstanding applied mathematician, a specialist in algebra, logic, computer sciences and mathematical linguistics. In 1965, he visited the linguistics research program at MIT, and we have worked together on several projects since.

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won’t tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, ‚Well, you know: It’s secret.‘

The authority you establish must emerge naturally from your character, from the particular strengths you possess.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

You can only have one aim per debate.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money. You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

I have always been grateful to Colonel Longley. He proved to me that when people in authority take a stand, good can come out of it.

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.