Neal Stephenson Quotes

I like to think of myself as fairly intellectual.

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.

The number of people that can reason well is much smaller than those that can reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling rocks, then several reasoners might be better than one. But reasoning isn't like hauling rocks, it's like, it's like racing, where a single, galloping Barbary steed easily outruns a hundred wagon-pulling horses.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created

We seem to have trouble with [critical thinking]. And our political system doesn't help.

Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.

We can't avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well.

The only process you've mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you've mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.

Reason alone cannot give you a whole steak, but it sure helps with identifying bologna.

Neither you nor I nor Einstein nor the Supreme Court of the United States is brilliant enough to reach an intelligent decision on any problem without first getting the facts

Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.

To cut off the confusion and accept an answer just because it's too scary not to have an answer is a good way to get the wrong answer.

You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.

To develop thinking as a skill, it should be deliberate, focused, confident, and enjoyable.

There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

The process of elimination, combined with a modicum of common sense, will always assist us to arrive at the correct conclusion with the maximum of possible accuracy and the minimum of hard labor. Which being translated means: I guessed it.

Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgements which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning. The exercise of ingenuity in mathematics consists in aiding the intuition through suitable arrangements of propositions, and perhaps geometrical figures or drawings.

Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli

Reading aloud and talking about what we're reading sharpens children's brains. It helps develop their ability to concentrate at length, to solve problems logically, and to express themselves more easily and clearly.

I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.

... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.