Oneohtrix Point Never Quotes

I write because it's my way of finding cool ideas, thinking through hard problems and things I don't understand, and getting better at something.

Most intuitive ideas have to be clarified, so there is a trial and error process.

A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.

Some ideas you have to chew on, then roll them around a lot, play with them before you can turn them into funky science fiction.

I like intellectual journeys.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

It is only through the opposition of ideas that we can learn to be self-critical, to work towards intellectual humility.

Good and bad ideas both come from the same fountain of speculation and experiment.

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.

I love being challenged and defending my positions and, when I'm wrong, learning from the exchange. It makes me smarter and better as a businessperson.

There are fashions in reading, even in thinking. You don't have to follow them unless you want to. On the other hand, watch out. Don't stick too closely to your favorite subject. That would keep you from adventuring into other fields. It's silly to build a wall around your interests.

I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year

The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.

As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.

Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism.

The objective of our religious foundations is to teach people that they are hurting themselves when they say they believe something. What we should realize is we know almost nothing about God and therefore we should be eager to search and to learn.

...to many it is not knowledge but the quest for knowledge that gives greater interest to thought-to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration.

Change your mind about something significant every day.

I'm always experimenting and trying different things. That's what keeps it fun and encourages growth.

We learn nothing by being right.

I like to know what the gestation of the idea is, I like to know the foundation, and I do a lot of reading and research.

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