Quotes
It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original. https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Brin
When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom. Frank Herbert (8 October 1920 – 11 February 1986) was an American science-fiction writer.
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert
People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we don't. Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?. Retrieved on 2007-11-15.
If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.
Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?. Retrieved on 2007-11-15.
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bjarne_Stroustrup#/random
The great success of this system is that it makes the general public afraid of taking responsibility, afraid of taking a position or giving a definite answer, or even of making mistakes.
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ai_Weiwei#/random
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. The Four-Gated City (1969)
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Doris_Lessing
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use. "The Will to Believe" p. 10
Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves. … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir.
"Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'", in The American Magazine, Vol. 68 (1909), p. 589
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_James#/random
I think people in power have a vested interest to oppose critical thinking. Carl Sagan: 'Science Is a Way of Thinking', Science Friday interview from May 1996, 27 December 2013
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan
Creating is always so much more stimulating than destroying.
p. 107 (Vintage 2003)
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago
The very reason [the Greeks] got so far is that they knew how to pick up the spear and throw it onward from the point where others had left it. Their skill in the art of fruitful learning was admirable. We ought to be learning from our neighbors precisely as the Greeks learned from theirs, not for the sake of learned pedantry but rather using everything we learn as a foothold which will take us up as high, and higher, than our neighbor.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Marianne Cowan trans., p. 30
