Jackie Mason Quotes

I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

To be a contrarian, you've got to be a contrarian against your own people.

The Enlightenment ideal, which all universities claim to endorse, is that everyone should think for themselves.

I was 7 years old, and I challenged everything. I never accepted answers on face value.

Would that well-thinking people should be replaced by thinking ones.

Think your own thoughts.

I'm raised to actually think, to use my brain.

The curiosity of the human mind is essential if you want citizens who think rather than accept the first nonsense they come to.

Philosophers, as things now stand, are all too fond of offering criticism from on high instead of studying and understanding things from within.

Listen and watch the world around you. Don't be satisfied with answers others give you.

It is important that students bring a certain …, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.

To me, the thing that sets us apart from so many other animal species is our ability to ask questions, investigate, gather information, come to our own conclusions, and sometimes depart from the pack, sometimes move away from the tribe.

I have always been very interested in thinking deeply about things. I do this a lot.

Be a student, not a follower. Take interest in what someone says, then debate it, ponder it, and consider it from all angles.

I don't believe anything unless I understand it inside out. And even if I understand something, it is not uncommon that I disagree with accepted view (even if it's a Nobel laureate).

The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training.

Don't pay attention to "authorities," think for yourself.

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.

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

Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by other people, we get indoctrinated and we get influenced by advertising.

As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there. So rather than correct the weird ideas, I would rather them to know how to think in the first place. Then they can correct the weird idea themselves.

Some broad themes brought me where I am today. At a very young age, my hobby became thinking and finding connections.