Quotes About Critical

Whenever I see that kind of story, where everybody agrees, I know there's something wrong.

Are people really such sheep that they can be fooled?

and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical sense and are not easy to fool with laughter

They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them.

the psyche has been burned and left us senseless, the world has been darker than lights-out in a closet full of hungry bats, and the whiskey and wine entered our veins when blood was too weak to carry on; and it will happen to others, and our few good times will be rare because we have a critical sense and are not easy to fool with laughter

Skepticism is always a good first response.

Every mission has life-or-death moments.

The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered, without applying any critical test whatever.

Too many people, possibly even the majority of them, were all too content to let others do that thinking and analysis for them.

This is not a drill.

The decision he would make would be extremely important but the way he made the decision would be careless, haphazard, and uniformed.

Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure.

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth

Evidence that contradicts the ruling belief system is held to extraordinary standards, while evidence that entrenches it is uncritically accepted.

In the case of Apple, there is effectively a network of Macintosh users, which is in danger of falling below critical mass.

The essence of scientific knowledge is the capacity to avoid clinging to certainties and received worldviews, and instead be prepared to change these, repeatedly if need be, in light of our knowledge, observations, discussions, different ideas, and criticisms. The nature of scientific thought is critical and rebellious. It does not suffer a priori conclusions, reverence, or untouchable truths.

Critical reading is a civic act; it's the kind of reading that asks you to be both sharp and vulnerable to both the world of the book and the world the book emerges from; the kind of reading that asks you to bear witness to the things in a book that speak low and deep to some low and deep part of you, which might not always say easy or comforting things.

Without critical work, political awareness is likely to remain superficial and rhetorical.

For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost.

Yet it would be a failure of imagination if we were to start out-as today's histories sometimes do-by simply judging people of the past for having outlooks that are not like our own. Rather, we must first try to enter sympathetically into an earlier world and to understand its people. Once we do that we will be in a far better position both to learn from them and to evaluate their outlooks critically.

All relations are power relations, everything is political, and claims of reason and truth are social constructs that maintain those in power. Unlike orthodox Marxism, critical theory is concerned with language and identity more than with material conditions.

The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes.

I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.

Great intellects are skeptical.