William Drummond Quotes

He who dares not reason, is a slave.

He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.

Never prevent men from forming judgments according to their intellect

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

The Enlightenment ideal, which all universities claim to endorse, is that everyone should think for themselves.

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.

Critical thinking is to a liberal education as faith is to religion. ... the converse was true also - faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.

Would that well-thinking people should be replaced by thinking ones.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

I like to regard myself as someone who's capable of critical thought, that is to say, who can evaluate claims.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

Reason is the tool men use to determine if their statements about reality are valid: there is no other. Those who do not or cannot reason are little better than slaves because their lives are controlled by the ideas of other men, ideas they have not examined.

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.

My determination is not to remain stubbornly with my ideas, but I'll leave them and go over to others as soon as I am shown plausible reasons which I can grasp.

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.

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

Address to Albert Einstein: You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.

The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.

Meek young men grow up in colleges and believe it is their duty to accept the views which books have given, and grow up slaves.

I teach people to be flexible, scientific and logical in their thinking and therefore to be less prone to brainwashing by the therapist.