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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?‘

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.

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

Thinking is a wonderful tool if it’s applied. Thinking, however, can not become the master. Thinking is a very bad master. If you’re dominated by thinking then your life becomes very restricted.

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

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.

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

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

There’s an urgent need to stop reacting to each immediate vexing issue in isolation. Such response often creates unanticipated second-order effects and even more problems for us.

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

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

Religion is just mind control.

I’m a problem-solver.

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.

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.

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

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

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

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

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.

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

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.

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

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.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

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.

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.

Everything popular is wrong.

All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.

The most common criticism I get is that I’m being manipulated and you shouldn’t use children in political ways, because that is abuse, and I can’t think for myself and so on. And I think that is so annoying! I’m also allowed to have a say – why shouldn’t I be able to form my own opinion and try to change people’s minds?

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

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.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

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.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

Learn to think continentally.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

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.

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

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