Bill Kristol Quotes

Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

When people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.

Don't fall into the trap of believing so deeply in your own ideology that you cannot even see the flaws in it.

People don't care to read what they already think or what any people think - they know all that well enough. They want to know what they ought to think.

Most people early achieve and later intensify a tendency to process new and disconfirming information so that any original conclusion remains intact. They become people of whom Philip Wylie observed: "You couldn't 't squeeze a dime between what they already know and what they will never learn."

People would believe propagate, spread rumors or conspiracy theories in order to protect their own system of denial.

We do the same thing in our own lives, embracing information that supports what we already prefer or vindicates choices we previously made.After all, it feels better to justify our opinions rather than challenge them, to contemplate only the pros and relegate the cons to the back of our minds. However, if we want to make the most of choice, we have to be willing to make ourselves uncomfortable. The question is, if we are willing, how exactly do we go about fortifying ourselves against these biases?

Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

Interest blinds some people, and enlightens others.

People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.

Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.

It feels great to have your own views reflected back to you, and you feel so right, but actually it's very dangerous. Because to make good decisions, you need to have a clear view of what all the options are.

I'm not always up to date on everything that's going on, but I am somewhat informed. I listen to NPR. And I actually watch Fox News, because I believe, if you just listen to the things that agree with you, you're not really seeing anything else.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices.

One of the things I try to do - and I always regret when I'm not doing it - is I try to read as much as possible as I'm consuming news.

I've always been a ravenous consumer of opinion. When I was in my high school library and my college library, I would read 'National Review' and I would read 'The Nation' and I would read 'The American Spectator' and I would read 'Mother Jones.'

I think there is a danger when it comes to fake news because there is some fake news out there, but there's also a danger when you only hear back to you the beliefs you already have.

Believing isn't thinking, but we've been programmed to believe that believing is thinking. To use our intelligence to think means we're keeping the energy active, we're thinking, we're really using the power of our intelligence in a thinking way. But when we've been programmed to believe, we're no longer thinking, because energy flows.

The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be.

If you're always in the company of people who agree with you, you're going to think of people who don't agree with you as venal or stupid. I constantly tell my students that if they're in the company of people who always say "amen" to what you say, find other company. And that is the source of illiberalism, when you are unable to listen to someone who thinks differently. That's when democracies are in trouble.

People like what is not true and they don't like what is true.

I want to inspire people to really open up their minds and not be one-sided or biased or hypocritical.