Charlie Trotter Quotes

There is a dearth of thinking skills - people are taught what to think, not how.

The real question, therefore, is not whether students should be taught to think critically and self-reflectively, but instead what they should be thinking critically about.

My goal is to invite readers to think along with me and draw their own conclusions.

I tend to solicit opinions from all those around me. I like to hear opinions and the rationale behind it from everybody in the room. Perhaps it's the result of going to law school and using the Socratic method.

I enjoy a good reasoned argument. I love the power of logic.

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.

We can't avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well.

God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don't have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I'm sure he didn't call everybody jerks.

Most people do not actually know how to think for themselves, and unfortunately that prevents them from even knowing it.

The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion but rather to know it.

Be Skeptical, but learn to listen.

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

Common Core reminds us what testing can do right. Modeled on standards of the world's education superpowers, questions demand critical thinking and creativity. Students are asked to write at length, show their work, and explain their reasoning.

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

Mostly, I try to take a rational approach to life.

I think if I weren't an actress, I might have made a halfway decent attorney! I like the way they think.

There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.

Don’t take the wrong side of the argument just because your opponent has taken the right side.

An ounce of algebra is worth of a ton of verbal argument.

Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well to produce more assurance in its use.

Education is far less about a set of facts than a way of thinking, than learning how to critically think. And therefore, what I always think should be the basis of education is not answers but questions.

The main functions of intelligence, that of inventing solutions and that of verifying them, do not necessarily involve one another. The first partakes of imagination; the second alone is properly logical.

Innovation comes from, one, acknowledging yourself; two, studying and understanding the problem; and three, finding a solution.

The first thing you get from the humanities, when they're well taught, is critical thinking. Philosophy in particular can play that role, not just in universities but in schools as well.

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