Charlie Munger Quotes

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

It is for this reason that rationality is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species...even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.

A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa.

If the facts change, I’ll change my opinion. What do you do, Sir?

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

My position is that we should not succumb to irrational belief.

I've always wanted to make the world a more rational place. I'm still working on it.

Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.

Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.

Mostly, I try to take a rational approach to life.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

When you're writing criticism or thinking critically, to draw a very limited minor conclusion from solid evidence is really not thinking.

Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake.

Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.

I think, though, that we need to be armed with the critical thinking skills that lawyers and scientists and journalists such as yourself have. We all need to have those as we make our way through the day. And they're not that hard to acquire.

When we are in the grasp of illusion - or, for that matter, whenever we have a new idea - instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it presents a major impediment of our ability to break free from the misinterpretation of randomness.

Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.

But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.

Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right.

Highly intelligent and well-informed people disagree on every political issue. Therefore, intelligence and knowledge are useless for making decisions, because if any of that stuff helped, then all the smart people would have the same opinions. So use your "gut instinct" to make voting choices. That is exactly like being clueless, but with the added advantage that you'll feel as if your random vote preserved democracy.

Opinions don't affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you're rational

I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.