I’m a problem-solver.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

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

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.

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

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

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

The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people’s opinions.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

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

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

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.

The major networks, the cable networks, they’re being prosecutors. They’re judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c’mon, that’s ridiculous. But they’re doing it.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.

Learn to think continentally.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

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

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

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

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

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

The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas.

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

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‚Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.

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

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

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

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.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

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

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.

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.

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.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

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

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

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

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.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

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

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

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

Religion is just mind control.

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.

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

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

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.

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