Michelle Dean Quotes

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

If you would judge, understand.

Most men, when they think they are thinking, are merely rearranging their prejudices.

Some one has said that most of us don't think, we just occasionally rearrange our prejudices.

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.

Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre [journalists]

To assume that someone's views are invariably influenced or shaped by his or her partner is lazy. It is an intellectual crutch we grope for when we do not have an effective counter to someone's argument.

I'm against ignorance. I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking. I'm against fashionable thinking. I am against the whole cliché of the moment.

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.

Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; but judge by reason …

Sit down before fact with an open mind. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you learn nothing.

The conventional wisdom of the United States is not always the right conventional wisdom.

I sometimes think many reviewers write the reviews of my films even before they see them.

Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good.

Without theory we can only copy.

I like groaning. That means that you're not pandering to their already settled prejudices.

The secret of innovation is to see what all see but think what none think

You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well.

To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.

What is "this drive"? It's the tendency to not simply accept things as they are but to want to think about them, to understand them. To not be content to simply feel sad but to ask what sadness means. To not just get a bus pass but to think about the economic reasons getting a bus pass makes sense. I call this tendency the intellectual.

Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.

Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.

Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.