Meir Soloveichik Quotes

Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and cliches.

I'll shout it if they want: Down with isms! Up with a Left that is capable of thinking outside the box! In other words, I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white. I have repented!

Don't live up to your stereotypes.

If you're going to figure something out, study ethics. You can ask What's the answer? What's Right and Wrong? What I learned is that nobody knows the answer and there is no Right and Wrong. So I'm incapable of becoming a fundamentalist because there are no absolutes, there's always a what if.

We always want to find good and bad guys, and I don't believe in that.

I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before. Any idea that came to me, the thing would be to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses.

Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.

It's really important, whether you're a conservative or a liberal, to always challenge the conventional wisdom, which is what I've tried to do in all my work.

Correcting it, I don't know; just shedding the light of day on it is a first major step, being one of the earliest generations not to just accept the words.

Never accept ultimatums, conventional wisdom, or absolutes.

I think the reason why 'Red Eye' is popular is because we question the common assumptions that you find elsewhere.

Despite what they tell you, there are simply no moral absolutes in a complex world.

Hard distinctions make bad philosophy.

I'm about challenging people. Like, properly challenging them and their assumptions.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

The ideologue says “whatever is right works.” The pragmatist says “whatever works is right.”

We promote pluralism, not dogma. We critique, we do not accept uncritically. We question and we debate, and over time we will separate the wheat from the chaff. We will separate the worthwhile from the misguided in all the new ideas and new voices that we hear. But we cannot do that if we close ourselves from the contrarian view, or simply suppress the views of those who would challenge the accepted and the known.

As for my own views, they've of course evolved over the years. This conception of 'renouncing beliefs' is very odd, as if we're in some kind of religious cult. I 'renounce beliefs' practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

I always grew up with, 'Question authority.'

I like to have something that I can challenge common-sense notions about, challenge the apparent truths, and really look past the many faces of a thing to see what's behind it.

Conventional wisdom is not always the best wisdom.

I felt the need to unlearn my formal education.

Just to say 'woke' is to always be in a constant stream of consciousness where you don't feel like the wool is pulled over your eyes so much. You question your belief that everything should just be presented to you on this beautiful plate. Everything is not as it seems.

It is only by questioning what people take for granted, what people hold to be true, that we can break through the hypnosis of social conditioning.