Robert J. Ringer Quotes

It's really important, whether you're a conservative or a liberal, to always challenge the conventional wisdom, which is what I've tried to do in all my work.

When you're used to being prepared to reject conventional wisdom, it leaves you open to learn more.

Skepticism is the lifeblood of scientific progress. By constantly asking whether there is a different answer, a better approach or an alternative view, scientists drive improvements and innovations that ultimately benefit everyone. It is not “antiscience” to be skeptical—it’s definitively pro-science.

I always grew up with, 'Question authority.'

My dad instilled in me to naturally question all authority. I don't follow anything blindly. That's religion, cops, doctors, schools, you name it.

The only way we can fly planes and use computers is because people were curious about their world and also skeptical about the things they were told to be immutable, so they figured out other ways of doing things.

I was 7 years old, and I challenged everything. I never accepted answers on face value.

If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.

Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.

An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind. It is not satisfied with explanation, with conclusions. Nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another form of conclusion.

All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom.

I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.

I appear as a skeptic, who believes that doubt is the great engine, the great fuel of all inquiry, all discovery and all innovation.

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.

In a complex universe, in a society undergoing unprecedented change, how can we find the truth if we are not willing to question everything and to give a fair hearing to everything?

As soon as an idea is accepted it is time to reject it.

The secret to discovery is to never believe existing facts.

I would say for the young: Don't be straight jacketed by ideology. Don't be driven by a structure of ideas.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

One of the most important things one can do in life is to brutally question every single thing you are taught.

If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

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.