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

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

Issues are never simple. One thing I’m proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

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

How is it possible for someone who believes that the world was created in six days to have a rational conversation with me, who doesn’t believe that, about other possibilities?

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

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.

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

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

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

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.

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.

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.

This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

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

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

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

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

I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world – from religion to race.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

I love trying new things.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.

Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now. This thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.

The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‚I’m not interested,‘ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.

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

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

If you are giving a graduate course you don’t try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

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

Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions.

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

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

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.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Everything popular is wrong.

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

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.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are 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?‘

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

To hold an idea and convince ourselves we arrived at it rationally, we go in search of evidence to support our view.

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

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

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

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

Some people, they take their form of working out as a religion that they think is better than everyone else’s. I’m not like that. If you have a better way to work out, and you can teach it to me, and I find it to be useful and gets me in better shape, I’m all about.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

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.

Travel teaches toleration.

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

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.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

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