For those of you who really want to give critical thought to your unique leadership style and foster genuine followership, learn from what’s out there and weave it into something meaningful and authentic.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.

Social conditioning, accompanied by moral and mental constraints, now serve to render the mediocre mind nearly incapable of unbiased assessment.

Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

A true survivor is someone who, after 12+ years of being schooled, remains independent in their thinking.

If chess has any relationship to film-making, it would be in the way it helps you develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives at a time when an impulsive decision seems very attractive.

We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language.

Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from...

Eye-rolling is not exactly the pinnacle of socratic investigation.

The early removal from school of future officers of Britain’s seapower, leaving them unacquainted with the subject matter and ideas of the distant and recent past, may account for the incapacity of no military thinking...

In a world where critical thinking skills are almost wholly absent, repetition effectively leapfrogs the cognitive portion of the brain. It helps something get processed as truth. We used to call it unsubstantiated buy-in. Belief...

Critical thinking is a necessary and vital skill”.~R. Alan Woods [2012]

Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.

Critical voices have to care about history. We have to care about the way in which things get controlled in the past because that’s when the damage gets done and if we don’t keep that...

This country has a UFO problem, after all. You might not have been aware we have one, or thought about it in these terms, but we do have a UFO problem: namely, we don’t seem...

The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right...

because a propositional justification exists for doing one thing, but not for doing another.” But why should we be reasonable, is the next come-back. Again, the answer is obvious. For one, because it would be...

A rich person is just a poor person with a crown and elaborate clothing, and a poor person is just a rich person with a crownless head and ragged clothing.

A mode of thought does not become ‘critical’ simply by attributing that label to itself, but by virtue of its content.

I think the influence of books is neither direct and more predictable. Books themselves are too unruly, and so are readers.

A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.

Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes...

Every genuinely new technology has a genuinely new way of breaking – and every now and then, those malfunctions open a new door to the adjacent possible. Sometimes the way a new technology breaks is...

The 1920s was a great time for reading altogether, very possibly the peak decade for reading in American life. Soon it would be overtaken by the passive distraction of radio, but for the moment reading...

Our brains tread a tightrope between learning too much from the past and incorporating too much new information from the present. The ability to walk this line – to adjust to the demands of different...

Woodrow Wilson claimed that history endows us with the “invaluable mental power we call judgment.

There is a magnificent, beautiful, wonderful painting in front of you! It is intricate, detailed, a painstaking labor of devotion and love! The colors are like no other, they swim and leap, they trickle and...

Taking the Right Decision in any situation only requires TWO major ingredients:Critical Thinking and Grace.Critical Thinking is like ‘Works’ and Grace is like ‘Faith’. So if “Faith without Works is dead,” then same, I believe,...

Critical thinking is a lost ‘art’ that has yet to be found, if it is even being looked for”.

The search to know has always been characterized by the need to doubt, the need to be critical, including the need to be self-critical.

No special academic expertise is required for insight into the Orwellian use of language, only clear thinking and common sense.

Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006]

One of the major differences I see in the political climate today is that there is less collective support for coming to critical consciousness – in communities, in institutions, among friends.

If one harbors anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, though in a sense known to be true, are inadmissable.

(The historian) “was able to disapprove without being astonished. She could reject and still understand.

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a...

The goal of intellectual life should be to see and understand what is true, not merely to adhere to a prevailing orthodoxy.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

Religion has the capacity to silence critical thinking and create blindness in entire groups of people. It can infect the minds of followers so completely as to allow the most egregious sexual acts against children...

Reflective learning provokes critical thinking, enabling us to pose relevant questions, revealing the profound oceans of ignorance that surround even the most learned scholars in our fields of modern knowledge, invoking us to be active...

Vi har noen rettigheter, plikter og verdier vi tar som en selvfølge. Men også selvfølgelighetene må begrunnes og forsvares. De oppleste og vedtatte sannhetene har godt av å bli utfordret, ikke minst for å gi...

Creating consent (hegemony) is never a simple act. It is rather the result of the social structures and the cultural patterns that dictates for each group its behavior and for each institutions its practices.

Cynicism, like gullibility, is a symptom of underdeveloped critical faculties.

If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant pastSecurity in human systems we’re told will always always lastEmotions are the sail and blind faith is the mastWithout the breath of real freedom we’re...

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are...

Calling a book “Young Adult” is just a fancy way of saying the book is censored. People used to say they like to read books about romance, true crime, comedy, horror or science fiction. But...

The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump...

Advanced technology does not always promise a more intelligent civilization. On the contrary, the more the common people rely on technology to do their thinking and solving for them, the less practice there is left...