Hermann Hesse Quotes

People can have so many ill-conceived ideas about me based on the parts that I play. I've had guys, when I've been single, come out of the woodwork to date me and I've found out very quickly that they were expecting some kind of whirlwind, some dramatic crazy person - and that's just not me.

While analogies are useful, however, they can also be misleading. They smuggle in assumptions that can be wrong.

Do not believe just because you want to believe.

There's certain things that people hold as truth but that are not always necessarily true.

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

Never assume the obvious is true.

Anyone who is seriously interested in me would usually do a little more homework and realise that the extreme criticisms are almost exclusively ideologically based.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

No one is served or benefitted by believing in false or faulty ideas.

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

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology.

I get angry when I think that people are blatantly incorrect on matters of fact.

Interviewers actively fool themselves, finding ways to learn from interviews even if there's actually nothing there to learn from.

It's not the things you don't know that trip you up. It's the things you think you know, but you don't. You fail to ask a certain question because you believe you know the answer. Separating your information from your assumptions can be very tricky business.

Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.

Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them.

Whether that's questioning the dominant opinion of the day, the conventional wisdom of the day, or whether it's questioning the policies that come out of Washington, or out of our government, generally, I think media's job is to look at it and say, "What's really going on here? What's the story behind what you see?"

I have spent most of my life unlearning things that were proved not to be true

My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another.

... the important thing is to, first of all, question everything you read or hear or see or are told. Question it, and try to see the world for what it actually is, as opposed to what someone or some company or some organization or some government is trying to represent it as, or present it as, however they've mislabeled it or dressed it up or told you.

It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.

Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.