Lawrence Summers Quotes

To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show the darkness but to put out our own eyes.

A university is supposed to show you ideas that offend you and make you feel uncomfortable,

Philosophy is not one truth, but thousands of truths. You don't have to believe in just one thing. When you chose one idea, you close yourself to the rest.

I think we are used to being critical and evaluating ideas.

It is well to open one's mind but only as a preliminary to closing it ... for the supreme act of judgment and selection.

Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.

A good philosopher is one who does not take ideas seriously.

Don't read a book and be a follower; read a book and be a student.

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.

An open mind but not an empty head.

All scientists know of colleagues whose minds are so well equipped with the means of refutation that no new idea has the temerity to seek admittance. Their contribution to science is accordingly very small.

Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.

An essential part of seeing clearly is finding the willingness to look closely and to go beyond our own ideas.

A thinking that approaches it objects openly, rigorously ... is also free toward its objects in the sense that it refuses to have rules prescribed to it by organized knowledge. It ... rends the veil with which society conceals them, and perceives them anew.

You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best loved ideas.

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.

...a distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.

I've long ago learned that if an idea will stand on its own, it'll stand having the light shone on it. But if you shine light on it and it kind of withers, then it probably wasn't a very good idea.

I am simply in favor of intellectual hospitality-that is all. You come to me with a new idea. I invite you into the house. Let us see what you have. Let us talk it over. If I do not like your thought, I will bid it a polite "good day." If I do like it, I will say: "Sit down; stay with me, and become a part of the intellectual wealth of my world."

Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?

Criticism per se does not worry me. I've always solicited it as part of the design process.

You don't have to think exactly like me. When people go, "I don't agree with everything you say," you know what, if you agree with everything anyone says, you're an idiot.

We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.

[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.