Jeff Mangum Quotes

As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there. So rather than correct the weird ideas, I would rather them to know how to think in the first place. Then they can correct the weird idea themselves.

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.

I try not to be overly analytical.

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.

I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do.

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, and the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well.

I think it's important for people like me to evaluate and reevaluate.

I doubt about myself. I think doubts are good in life. The people who don't have doubts I think only two things-arrogance or not intelligence.

O my body, make of me always a man who questions!

Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.

Questioning is the piety of thought.

Rational thinking is an important aspect of human nature, but we have imagination, we have ambition, we have irrational fear, we are swayed by other people, we get indoctrinated and we get influenced by advertising.

At the very smallest wheel of our reasoning it is possible for a handful of questions to break the bank of our answers.

You don't have to believe everything you think.

The challenge is right now, I call it the death of critical thinking in America. It's a very worrisome development. More and more people seem to be resisting the idea of standing back and asking questions about something, challenging their beliefs.

Intelligent people simply aren’t willing to accept answers that they don’t understand — no matter how many other people try to convince them of it, or how many other people believe it, if they aren’t able to convince them selves of it, they won’t accept it.

I'm trying to make work that is reflective and is encouraging of reflection.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

The foolish reject what they see and not what they think; the wise reject what they think and not what they see.

The roles I think about and can't stop thinking about - on the subway, when I'm riding my bike, when I'm running - are the things I connect to.

We need to discern what it is that requires reflection in our lives and in what we read and how we read it.

We have everything we need, in fact, except the most important thing of all — time to think and the habit of thought.

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

Quiet time and solitude are vital to helping me keep perspective. I consider myself fortunate to have so much quiet built into my profession. I spend long hours by myself at my easel. And while I work, I think-of the future, of my loved ones, of God's goodness and the many exciting opportunities that surround me. I ponder the challenges I face, the needs of others, the direction my life is going.

The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion - in the long run, these are the only people who count.