The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

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

The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.

If one has the answers to all the questions – that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.

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

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

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

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

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

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

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

I don’t believe in the after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

The word ‚belief‘ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.

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

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

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

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.

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

When doubt comes against us, we have to lift up the shield of faith. We do this when we open our mouth and say what God’s Word says, rather than grumbling and complaining about the problem.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

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

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

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.

Everything popular is wrong.

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left – which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study – are not likely to get much attention.

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.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

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

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

If you judge, investigate.

Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.

I think any statement about stock prices is always suspect unless it’s made by Warren Buffett.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.

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

Religion is just mind control.

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

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

I’m a problem-solver.

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

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

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

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

You can’t trust very many people.

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

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

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

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Pessimism never won any battle.

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.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.