Quotes About Discernment

How can you tell when someone is only imagining?

If we teach only the findings and products of science – no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be – without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?

Spurious accounts that snare the gullible are readily available. Skeptical treatments are much harder to find. Skepticism does not sell well.

What thin partitions sense from thought divide!

It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from vivid fiction.

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas...If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.

Saber muito não lhe torna inteligente. A inteligência se traduz na forma que você recolhe, julga, maneja e, sobretudo, onde e como aplica esta informação.

it is presumptuous in me to wish to choose my path, because I cannot tell which path is best for me. I must leave it to the Lord, Who knows me, to lead me by the path which is best for me, so that in all things His will may be done.

Do not be so quick to accept as truth what is only conjecture.

Even in lies there are sometimes truths revealed.

Literary works quite often 'know' things that the reader does not know, or does not know yet, or perhaps will never know.

Knowing when to fight is just as important as knowing how.

Knowing when not to fight is just as important as knowing how.

Richard didn't trust Minister Chanboor. The man's tongue was too smooth. Truth didn't wear a tongue smooth; lies did.

There are times when there is no choice but to act immediately; even then it must be with your best judgment, using all your experience and everything you do know.

He'd often said that keeping things to himself was a matter of survival. Barracus had often told her that if she was doing something important she shouldn't tell people anything they didn't need to know. He lived his life by that rule. In fact, he often wouldn't tell Magda about things he thought she didn't need to know. Like why he killed himself.

It doesn't require an education, Sergeant Beata, to see what's right before your eyes. Use your head." Beata

Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.

Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.

If you don't know when to be a human being, you don't know when to be a witch.

Shoes, men, coffins; never accept the first one you see.

Haven't you got any romance in your soul?' said Magrat plaintively. 'No,' said Granny. 'I ain't. And stars don't care what you wish, and magic don't make things better, and no one doesn't get burned who sticks their hand in a fire. If you want to amount to anything as a witch, Magrat Garlick, you got to learn three things. What's real, what's not real, and what's the difference.

Few things are hidden from a quiet child with good eyesight.

Tiffany was on the whole quite a truthful person, but it seemed to her that there were times when things didn't divide easily into 'true' and 'false', but instead could be 'things that people needed to know at the moment' and 'things that they didn't need to know at the moment'.