Ben Carson Quotes

Beware of anyone who calls you bad names merely for asking honest questions. Beware of anyone who insists on reframing your sincere curiosity as a character defect. Beware of anyone who questions your motives while ignoring your facts. When someone calls you bad names merely for asking questions, it suggests they know the answer but are terrified to admit it.

How can you have a reasonable debate with people who are constantly changing the panic? They are moving the panic to a greater wave of hysteria?

Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.

Democracy allows rhetoric, false empathy and emotion to pummel rational thinking - so it's no wonder so many politicians thrive in it.

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.

Ideas are 10 a penny. It's the execution that's the hard thing to do. House is standing up against a tide of sentiment and emotionalism over reason that threatens to engulf this world. When you think about it, a rationalist, a man of science and reason, is in a pretty lonely position.

Anybody who has something sensible or worthwhile to say should be able to say it calmly and soberly, relying on the words themselves to convey his meaning, without resorting to yelling.

Intelligent people tend to talk about the facts. They don't sit around and call each other names. That's what you can find on a third grade playground.

Sometimes I like to list the strongest arguments I can find to support a point of view I think is wrong. When I have them before me, I am up against a real opponent rather than a hypothetical one that is an easy target for me to hit.

Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster.

Don't raise your voice, improve your argument.

President Trump, when challenged on facts, says that many people feel the way he does. But feelings should not take the place of reason in matters of public policy.

When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.

Now is the time for everyone who believes in the rule of reason to speak up against pathological science and its purveyors.

Persons not habituated to reason often argue absurdly, because, from particular instances, they deduce general conclusions, and extend the result of their limited experience of individuals indiscriminately to whole classes.

I hope you become comfortable with the use of logic without being deceived into concluding that logic will inevitably lead you to the correct conclusion.

When they can't win a debate (can they ever?), leftists deploy what the late novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called the argument from intimidation. Instead of trying to refute the other side, they label their opponents' position evil, attribute sinister motives to its adherents, and charge that its proponents are encouraging violence.

Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence.

The dominance of conclusions over arguments is most pronounced where emotions are involved.

It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.

My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument." Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.