logo

Quotes About Thinking

The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical.
~ Carl Sagan
On the other hand, mere critical thinking, without creative and intuitive insights, without the search for new patterns, is sterile and doomed. To solve complex problems in changing circumstances requires the activity of both cerebral hemispheres: the path to the future lies through the corpus callosum.
~ Carl Sagan
A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit.
~ Carl Sagan
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge
~ Carl Sagan
Part of the success of the tobacco industry in purveying this brew of addictive poisons can be attributed to widespread unfamiliarity with baloney detection, critical thinking, and the scientific method. Gullibility kills.
~ Carl Sagan
In a way, science might be described as paranoid thinking applied to Nature: we are looking for natural conspiracies, for connections among apparently disparate data. Our objective is to abstract patterns from Nature (right-hemisphere thinking), but many proposed patterns do not in fact correspond to the data. Thus all proposed patterns must be subjected to the sieve of critical analysis (left-hemisphere thinking).
~ Carl Sagan
And all I'm saying is that it is within our capability to survive. I don't guarantee it. Prophecy is a lost art. And I don't know what the probabilities are that we will go one way or another. And no one says it's easy. But it is clear, as Einstein said, that if we do not make a change in our way of thinking, all is lost.
~ Carl Sagan
But the brain does much more than just recollect it inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes, it generates abstractions. The simplest thought like the concept of the number one has an elaborate logical underpinning. The brain has its own language for testing the structure and consistency of the world.
~ Carl Sagan
Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything—new ideas and established wisdom. This kind of thinking is also an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change.
~ Carl Sagan
Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation Ã¢â'¬Â¦ The road to this paradise was not so comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it.
~ Carl Sagan
La comprensión del cambio climático puede tener profundas consecuencias básicas, porque el hombre está ejerciendo tremenda influencia en el medio ambiente de la Tierra, a menudo en formas que revelan mediocres caminos de pensamiento, malas comprensiones y conveniencias individuales y beneficios económicos a corto plazo, entre los habitantes del planeta.
~ Carl Sagan
science to forge a potent partnership against pseudo-science.
~ Carl Sagan
If we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition - even when it seems to be doing a little good - we abet a general climate in which skepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate.
~ Carl Sagan
The left hemisphere seems to feel quite defensive-in a strange way insecure-about the right hemisphere; and, if this is so, verbal criticism of intuitive thinking becomes suspect on the ground of motive. Unfortunately, there is every reason to think that the right hemisphere has comparable misgivings -expressed nonverbally, of course- about the left.
~ Carl Sagan
A sedução do maravilhoso embota nossas faculdades críticas.
~ Carl Sagan
There is no doubt that right-hemisphere intuitive thinking may perceive patterns and connections too difficult for the left hemisphere; but it may also detect patterns where none exist. Skeptical and critical thinking is not a hallmark of the right hemisphere. And unalloyed right-hemisphere doctrines, particularly when they are invented during new and trying circumstances, may be erroneous or paranoid.
~ Carl Sagan
la ciencia es más que un cuerpo de conocimiento, es una manera de pensar.
~ Carl Sagan
Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?
~ Terry Bisson
Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?
~ Terry Bisson
Then, Pan, when that's done, maybe I can think about us. In the right way, the way I would like to—not just because of last night or some other night but because there might be a whole lot of nights, maybe even a lifetime. I can think about it because then there will be a future that isn't measured in hours or days.
~ Terry Brooks
Change comes in the form of repetition. We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two, in any case. It's been so in the
~ Terry Brooks
Književno obrazovanje ima mnogo vrlina, ali sustavna misao nije jedna od njih.
~ Terry Eagleton
If theory means a reasonably systematic reflection of our guiding assumptions, it remains as indispensable as ever.
~ Terry Eagleton
Those who can think up feminism or structuralism; those who can't apply such insights to Moby Dick or The Cat in the Hat.
~ Terry Eagleton