Bernard Crick Quotes

The surest way to lose truth is to pretend that one already wholly possesses it.

Seek the company of those who are looking for the truth, but run from those who have found it.

Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.

One must be truthful and honest in his approach; a constant independent inquiry and not blindly following a certain blue print laid down by others

As soon as we cease to pry about at random, we shall come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma; and as soon as we come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma, not only are the days of our liberty over, but we have lost the password that has hitherto opened to us the gates of success as well.

Our understanding of the world around us is constantly being redefined and expanded, and so therefore, it is wiser to be passionate about seeking for truth than knowing it.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.

When schools produce students who learned to think on the left or on the right, they're not thinking for themselves.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

He who dares not reason, is a slave.

Notwithstanding this high Ecclesiastical authority, he who dared accept truth only because it could be proved, or proved to be good, and disregard authority, was commonly stigmatized as an infidel.

For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward truth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

When a man fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent.

I was always one of those guys who was a seeker after truth. I want to know what's going on.

Education must be aimed at creating a wider imagination in the child, not at suppressing. The child's mind must be set free.

Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open.

An understandable prejudice of intellectual life leads us to view tilters at orthodoxy as courageous front-line innovators.

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

It is not good to settle into a set of opinions. It is a mistake to put forth effort and obtain some understanding and then stop at that…. Do not rely on following the degree of understanding that you have discovered, but simply think, "This is not enough.

Soundness of understanding is connected with freedom of enquiry; consequently, opinion should, as far as public security will admit, be exempted from restraint.

Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four