Howard Nemerov Quotes

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

I don’t attack people. I attack ideas. And some very good people can have some very bad ideas.

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.'

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

I'd like to be known as the person who saw things from a different point of view to others.

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

Beware of the person of one book.

I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before. Any idea that came to me, the thing would be to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses.

My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know, we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.

In a bubble, anyone who argues pessimistically is seen as crazy.

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values.

A high openness score means you're open-minded - you see the world for what it is - whereas a low openness score means you're incredibly closed-minded, and you see the world the way you want to see it, regardless of what is actually going on.

There is such a polarized discussion of economics among people like analysts, columnists, bloggers; often, they end up just saying that views other than their own should not even be discussed. I find that frustrating. There is no intellectual progress without considering lots and lots of different views.

This open eye for possible alternatives which need to be scrutinized before we can determine which is the best grounded is profoundly disconcerting to all conservatives and to almost all revolutionaries.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

One of the big differences between liberals and conservatives is that liberals really, really want to believe that people want to listen to facts.

Being unbiased is a lot like being humble: as soon as you think you are, you aren’t. Neither are a finite state of being but a continuous struggle to not allow our perspectives poison our opinions.

We all have our opinions; that's only human.

You can have opinions, but it doesn't mean they're right.

I like reading things where someone's looked at what I do with some honesty, and maybe been challenged by it, and they have something to say that shows they've thought about it, even if they don't necessarily like it.

I think every player thinks in a different way.

We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.

Rational discourse is only one way of presenting and examining an issue and by no means the best. Our new intellectuals are not aware of its limitations and of the nature of the things outside.