Christina Hoff Sommers Quotes

Reason and the reasoning faculty need no foreign assistance, but are sufficient for their own purposes. They move within themselves, and make directly for the point in view. Wherefore, acts in accordance with them are called right acts, for they lead along the right road.

Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth.

When men and women think, the first step to progress is taken.

Chess is so interesting in itself, as not to need the view of gain to induce engaging in it; and thence it is never played for money

Data-driven predictions can succeed-and they can fail. It is when we deny our role in the process that the odds of failure rise. Before we demand more of our data, we need to demand more of ourselves.

Know how to choose well. Most of life depends thereon. It needs good taste and correct judgment, for which neither intellect nor study suffices.

I think the biggest hurdle American feminists have in terms of taking a more global approach is that too often when you hear American feminists talk about international feminism or women in other countries, it kind of goes along with this condescending point of view like we have to save the women of such-and-such country; we have to help them.

If we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments.

Someday I must read this scholar Everyone. He seems to have written so much--all of it wrong.

Naturally my stories are about women - I'm a woman. I don't know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I'm not always sure what is meant by "feminist." In the beginning I used to say, well, of course I'm a feminist. But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not. I think I'm a feminist as far as thinking that the experience of women is important. That is really the basis of feminism.

We need both information and thinking. Information is no substitute for thinking and thinking is no substitute for information.

Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.

What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer

When all moves equally (says Pascal), nothing seems to move as in a vessel under sail; and when all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so. He that stops first, views as from a fixed point the horrible extravagance that transports the rest.

The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.

If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.

There are three sides to every coin (Heads, Tails, and The Edge). Your ability to understand contrasting points of view and your ability to glean what information you believe to be valuable from each side is a crucial skill.

we need to make a few critical decisions in major areas of life and then manage those decisions day to day.

Every day I'm reassessing what I've been taught against what I see, and the man I need to be if I'm going to call myself a leader of anybody.

Learning how to think in the midst of fear is a lesson that everyone needs to learn.

There is too much ideological conformity in gender studies. The true-believers fashion the theories, write the textbooks and teach the students. When journalists, policymakers, and legislators address topics such as the wage gap, gender and education, or women's health, they turn to these experts for enlightenment. For the most part, they peddle misinformation, victim politics, and sophistry. They claim that their teachings represent the academic consensus, but that is only because they have excluded all dissenters.

By the end of the book, it is quite different than the way you thought it would be when you started the book - both in form and what it contains and what you think. Well, you tipped in a lot and you digested a lot - it wasn't pre-digested in your view. And it changed what you thought and how you see things.

I'm not really saddened that [Pussy Riot] ended up in jail, though there is nothing good in that. What saddens me is that they took things to such a level, here, from my point of view, that they degraded the dignity of women.

Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

I'm not comfortable with categories, and I distrust most definitions. The word 'definition' is based on the word 'finite,' which would seem to indicate that once we've defined something, we don't need to think about it anymore.