People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

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

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.

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

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

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

I think a lot of things that are the norm, that are very systematic, don’t work.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

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

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Only the aspirants for president are fool enough to believe what they read in the newspapers.

I’m a problem-solver.

Learn to think continentally.

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

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

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

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.

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.

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

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

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

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

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.

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

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

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

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.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

We’re always, by the way, in fundamental physics, always trying to investigate those things in which we don’t understand the conclusions. After we’ve checked them enough, we’re okay.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

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

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

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

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

If you judge, investigate.

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

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

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

I often advocate that we look at many sides of an issue, walk in someone else’s shoes, and identify and reject false choices.

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

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?‘

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.

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.

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

I’m really bad with answering questions. Usually, I don’t even answer them. I try to find inspiration inside of the question. I think, and I jump from one beam of inspiration or energy to the next, as opposed to explaining the energy.

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

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.

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.

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

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.