Hyman Rickover Quotes

Crystal-clear thinking is one of the things we look for - not a fancy slide pitch, but crystal-clear thinking.

... writing had become an essential element of the process of thinking. Not until I had put my thoughts down on paper could I examine them with objectivity.

It turns out that in order to think well, knowledge helps.

You can't be a good writer without being a good thinker.

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not?

My parents encouraged thought. You'll get through life better if you learn how to think.

I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking.

I hate to write Solutions in my books because I don’t really have solutions.

The times call for clear, lucid thinking rather than Clare Luceish thought.

My view is that we cannot be ruled by fear. When we do that, we are not making ourselves see. We are not thinking things through. We are not looking at what works.

If you're going to write, you're going to have to force yourself to really study the world.

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.

I kind of do all of this writing as a way of thinking and learning. I'm sure it's similar to being a journalist: You get to learn, and that's the greatest kind of job.

My goal is never to push anyone to do anything other than think.

For me, my greatest weakness is also my greatest strength: I'm a complete overthinker about everything.

Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.

To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others

Close reading of tough-minded writing is still the best, cheapest, and quickest method known for learning to think for yourself... Reading, and rigorous discussion of that reading in a way that obliges you to formulate a position and support it against objections, is an operational definition of education... reading, analysis, and discussion is the way we develop reliable judgment, the principle way we come to penetrate covert movements behind the facade of public appearances.

I always try and find new things to think about and address. That really opens you up as a writer. I can write a lot of what I feel and it helps put it into clearer perspective.

Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to think. It forces you to work the thing through. Nothing comes to us out of the blue, very easily.

To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.

We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.

Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.

To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down. If you're going to write, you have to find out what's bad for you. Part of that you learn fast, and then you learn what's good for you.

Writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are. The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.