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

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.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

I don’t think that my kind of journalism has ever been universally popular. It’s lonely out here.

‚Love Story‘ is actually about a guy that I almost dated. But when I introduced him to my family and my friends, they all said they didn’t like him. All of them!

Rock ‚n‘ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

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

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

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

I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.

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

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

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

David Beckham has never impressed me.

With all due respect, the Mona Lisa is overrated.

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

Well, we can’t say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it.

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

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

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

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

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

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.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

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 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.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

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 would rather drink weedkiller than support Obamacare.

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

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

I just don’t like mutual funds. I think they’re a rip-off.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

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

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

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.

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.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

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

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

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.

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

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

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

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

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

I don’t believe in nepotism. I don’t much like the idea of parents who interfere.

Whatever the reviewers feel about ‚The Casual Vacancy‘, it is what I wanted it to be, and you can’t say fairer than that as a writer.

Facts are stubborn things.

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

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

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

I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

A difference of opinion is what makes horse racing and missionaries.