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 good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

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.

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

Religion is just mind control.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

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.

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

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.

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

I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

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

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

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

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

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

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

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.

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.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

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

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

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

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

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

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

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

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

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.

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

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.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

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.

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.