Barack Obama Quotes

I think, though, that we need to be armed with the critical thinking skills that lawyers and scientists and journalists such as yourself have. We all need to have those as we make our way through the day. And they're not that hard to acquire.

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.

Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

Some people spend their time reasoning and thinking out everything, and so anything that cannot be fully understood, they will not accept. We call these people 'intellectuals.'

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, and the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

The concept of logical thinking is selection and this is brought about by the processes of acceptance and rejection. Rejection is the basis of logical thinking.

Thinking. A process by which I use my brain to make a rational decision.

I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

Organized common (or uncommon) sense -- very basic knowledge -- is an enormously powerful tool. There are huge dangers with computers. People calculate too much and think too little.

Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.

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.

Critical thinking is to a liberal education as faith is to religion. ... the converse was true also - faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.

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

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

I think things through a lot, so I probably use my head more than my heart. That probably comes through in my acting.

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

Intellectuals are good at seeing the big picture. But they are not so good at process.

To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.

Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.