Kalki Koechlin Quotes

Everybody is entitled to have an opinion. But it is also useful to have some facts.

Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.

I think that we need to look hard at our beliefs and be responsible about how we speak out.

I love the gray areas, but I like the gray areas as considered by bright, educated, courageous people.

People who know me know that I'm always interested in an honest, civil exchange of views, and I'm not some Hollywood liberal know-nothing.

Criticism is fine and conversation is fine, but the person who's criticizing should know what they're saying and whom they're criticizing.

Civilized discourse demands critical thinking, self-reflexiveness, sober-headed analysis.

You can only talk rubbish if you're aware of knowledge.

My father, Benjamin Shiller, told me not to believe in authorities or celebrities - that society tends to imagine them as superhuman. It's good advice. People are snowed by celebrities all the time. In academia people have this idea of achieving stardom - publishing in the best journals, being at the best university, writing on the hot topic everyone else is writing about. But that's what my father told me not to do. He taught me that you have to pursue things that sound right to you.

You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything.

Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

Those who speak of blind obedience may appear to know many things, but they do not understand the doctrines of the gospel. There is an obedience that comes from a knowledge of the truth that transcends any external form of control. We are not obedient because we are blind, we are obedient because we can see.

If, two people have good minds and they're looking at problems, if they agree all the time it means one of them is not thinking. If they disagree all the time, it means one of them is not thinking. They're just allowing their political position to dictate their position on an issue. And I think that's unhealthy. And the public knows better.

People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

I've written a lot of other books and this book [Tears we cannot stop] was different. I couldn't just say what I wanted to say in the same style that I said it in those other books. I felt compelled to preach.

Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the common beliefs of their day.

She, too, spoke only when the queen or king addressed her first, but she looked searchingly at every supplicant, and her clear face said that she had opinions about everything she heard, and that it was her proud duty to think out those opinions, and make them responsible and coherent.

The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind. Such a man is not malleable; he may be mistaken, he may be fooled in a given instance, but he is inflexible in regard to the absolutism of reality, i.e., in seeking and demanding truth.

Just because you believe it doesn't make it so.

It is necessary, if one would read aright, that he should read at least two newspapers, representing both sides of important subjects.

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.

To be avoided at all costs is the solace of opinion without the pain of thought.

Everyone is free to set up an opinion and to adduce proofs in support of it. Whether, though, a scientist shall find it worth his while to enter into serious investigations of opinions so advanced is a question which his reason and instinct alone can decide. If these things, in the end, should turn out to be true, I shall not be ashamed of being the last to believe them.

I've always wanted to work for, like, "Assume your audience is cleverer than you," rather than the other way around.

Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy.