Critical Reasoning Quotes

I had always been impressed by the fact that there are surprisingly many individuals who never use their minds if they can avoid it, and yet are not stupid, and an equal number who obviously do use their minds but in an amazingly stupid way.

One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself.

It is bad enough that so many people believe things without any evidence. What is worse is that some people have no conception of evidence and regard facts as just someone else's opinion.

A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.

The supreme triumph of reason is to cast doubt upon its own validity.

I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.

Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle.

If they told us what to believe, and we didn't come to it on our own, is it still true?

The spirit of logical analysis should in practice blend with the practical pressure for the adoption of some form of international language, but it should not allow itself to be stampeded by it.

I didn't know what kinds of questions to ask in mathematics. In physics, I could see there were things that were known and things that weren't.

Half the world's troubles come from men not being trained to resent a fallacy as much as an insult.

There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing.

My first Kickstarter project created a book called 'Clear and Present Thinking', a college-level textbook on logic and critical reasoning, which was made available to the world for free. As a professor myself, I observed that the price of textbooks was too high for some of my students.

Those who use 'Correlation is not the same as causation' as a magic incantation to dismiss all fact-using professions are fools holding a lit match in one hand and an open gas can in the other, screaming, 'One has nothing to do with the other!'

And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers-perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.

I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.

What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.

If the reason for doing something is that everyone else is doing it, it's not a good enough reason.

I think [Louis] Brandeis challenges all of the current justices. As he said, "If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold." You have to take the values that the framers were concerned about and translate them into this new age.

The voice of reason is inaudible to irrational people.

Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument ... which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument ... which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.

We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.

In matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard for any other consideration.

Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency.

What could be more advantageous in an intellectual contest - whether it be chess, bridge, or stock selection - than to have opponents who have been taught that thinking is a waste of energy?