I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things.

Let no such man be trusted.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

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

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

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.

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?

We can’t have, like, willy-nilly proliferation of fake news. That’s crazy. You can’t have more types of fake news than real news. That’s allowing public deception to go unchecked. That’s crazy.

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

We are so conformist; nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff; we have been trained to be consumers, and we are all consuming far too much.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.

One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.

I’m skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

Solutions are not the answer.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

I would love to encourage all my teammates to eat the best way they possibly can. High school athletes. Now, that’s not the way our food system in America is set up. It’s very different. They have a food pyramid, and I disagree with that. I disagree with a lot of things that people tell you to do.

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

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

I know that the arts are important. I’m not denying that, but I can’t associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

I’m as skeptical as anyone would be about celebrities and causes – and I will dare to say to you that I don’t think of myself as a celebrity per se.

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.

Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

But your questions, which are unanswerable without exception, all spring from the same erroneous thinking.

Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves – who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Presented with the claims of nineteenth-century racist anthropology, a rational person will ask two sorts of questions: ‚What is the scientific status of the claims?‘ ‚What social or ideological needs do they serve?‘

I really don’t believe in magic.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.