Critical Thinking Quotes

“Anger, surprisingly, often follows social hierarchies. Many people easily express anger toward those who are less powerful—a waiter, a child, a junior employee—but suppress it when mistreated by someone more powerful, such as a boss, police officer, or a government body.”
― Mason Carter, Critical Thinking Unchained: From Formal Logic to Dialectics of Emancipation

“To be intellectually humble is not to live in constant doubt. Rather, it’s to live with a mind open to correction, and a heart strong enough to prioritize truth over pride.”
― Mason Carter, Critical Thinking Unchained: From Formal Logic to Dialectics of Emancipation

“True wisdom thrives in open minds; those who tune only to their own frequency become white-noise prisoners.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The human animal craves truth’s stark naked echo, deaf to the prospect that the neutral silence between the white noise of our cognitive biases is the only liminal space where its pure resonance is truly audible.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Critical thinking begins with clarity: knowing when we’re dealing with facts, and when we’re dealing with beliefs awaiting verification.”
― Mason Carter, Critical Thinking Unchained: From Formal Logic to Dialectics of Emancipation

“A critical thinker is not someone who knows all the answers, but someone who keeps asking better questions.”
― Mason Carter, Critical Thinking Unchained: From Formal Logic to Dialectics of Emancipation

“Anger is a natural emotion. It arises when we perceive something unjust, unfair, or threatening. There is nothing inherently wrong in feeling angry. Emotions are part of being human. The real problem arises when we express anger impulsively—especially when it targets another person.”
― Mason Carter, Critical Thinking Unchained: From Formal Logic to Dialectics of Emancipation

“They want you confused, compliant, and consuming. But wealth is built by people who think, plan, and act with conviction.”
― Joseph C. Kunz Jr., Money's Dirty Little Secrets: How to Break the Rules, Get Filthy Rich, and Laugh All the Way to the Bank

“In cases like these, it takes four minds in one to be creative”
― Mike Lewis, Yummy, Funny, Easter Bunnies: A Humorous Children's Storybook about Easter and Creativity

“Manipulation, like the conquest whose objectives it serves, attempts to anesthetize the people so they will not think. For if the people join to their presence in the historical process critical thinking about that process, the threat of their emergence materializes in revolution. Whether one calls this correct thinking "revolutionary consciousness" or "class consciousness," it is an indispensable precondition of revolution. The dominant elites are so well aware of this fact that they instinctively use all means, including physical violence, to keep people from thinking. They have a shrewd intuition of the ability of dialogue to develop a capacity for criticism.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“Doesn't anyone else in this world fucking love anyone?”
― Caroline Kepnes, For You and Only You

“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject”
― John Stuart Mill

“We taught the map. But not how to read the land.”
— Sarah Kissane, Obsolete: The Education Wake-Up Call”
― Sarah Kissane, Obsolete: The Education Wake-Up Call

“What if the system isn’t broken — what if it was built this way?”
— Sarah Kissane, Obsolete: The Education Wake-Up Call”
― Sarah Kissane

“The world is teaching kids to adapt to machines. But who is teaching them to be more human?”
— Sarah Kissane, Obsolete: The Education Wake-Up Call”
― Sarah Kissane, Obsolete: The Education Wake-Up Call

“Have you not assessed why that idea is the dominant narrative? Explore the counter narrative and then realign your position.”
― Daniel Taotua

“the part of the mind that reads a story is also the part that reads the world; it can deceive us, but it can also be trained to accuracy; it can fall into disuse and make us more susceptible to lazy, violent, materialistic forces, but it can also be urged back to life, transforming us into more active, curious, alert readers of reality.”
― George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

“Criticism, rightly practiced, begins and remains a form of introspection.”
― Mason Carter, Critical Thinking Unchained: From Formal Logic to Dialectics of Emancipation

“To understand the truth of any object, event, or idea, we must uncover its constitutive relations—the forces, processes, and structures that made it what it is.”
― Mason Carter, Critical Thinking Unchained: From Formal Logic to Dialectics of Emancipation

“You can’t outsource strategy. If you don’t think for yourself, someone else will do it—and charge you for it.”
― Joseph C. Kunz Jr., Money's Dirty Little Secrets: How to Break the Rules, Get Filthy Rich, and Laugh All the Way to the Bank

“Question first impressions: recognize that your initial perception of a situation may be incomplete or biased.”
― Kevin L. Michel, The Council of Gods

“In the weave of class consciousness, each strained thread stitches resistance against the cloak of oppression.”
― Paulo Ricardo Zargolin

“Writing trivialities is the task of legislators. For thinkers, what remains is to delve into the everyday, as if words were opioids.”
― Paulo Ricardo Zargolin

“Religion must evolve beyond being merely organized to being fully creative, inviting us to think critically, carefully, and sometimes even disruptively.”
― Swami Padmanabha, Evolution in Divine Love: The Eternal Becoming of God, Soul, and Matter

“A cowardly tyrant only remembers his own greatness in imagination.”
― Duop Chak Wuol

“Art in all its forms is simply a means to communicate, not a means to generate knowledge.”
― Ivan Catanzaro, The Meaning Of Life Is To Fight: A Collection of Poems

“Superstupidity” could be as much of an existential risk as artificial superintelligence (ASI).”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“Giving people information is like giving them a bunch of dots and letting them come to their own conclusion. 'Let the facts speak for themselves.' The problem is, they rarely do.”
― Jyoti Guptara, Business Storytelling from Hype to Hack: How Do Stories Work? Unlock the Software of the Mind

“जीना मुश्किल है कि आसान ज़रा देख तो लो
लोग लगते हैं परेशान ज़रा देख तो लो

फिर मुक़र्रिर कोई सरगर्म सर-ए-मिंबर है
किस के है क़त्ल का सामान ज़रा देख तो लो

ये नया शहर तो है ख़ूब बसाया तुम ने
क्यूँ पुराना हुआ वीरान ज़रा देख तो लो

इन चराग़ों के तले ऐसे अँधेरे क्यूँ है
तुम भी रह जाओगे हैरान ज़रा देख तो लो

तुम ये कहते हो कि मैं ग़ैर हूँ फिर भी शायद
निकल आए कोई पहचान ज़रा देख तो लो

ये सताइश की तमन्ना ये सिले की परवाह
कहाँ लाए हैं ये अरमान ज़रा देख तो लो”
― Javed Akhtar, लावा

“Critical thinkers are honest about the limitations of their knowledge. Perhaps it is impossible to know everything there is to know—and there is still so much to learn.”
― Bremer Acosta, A Philosophy of Critical Thinking