Lee Gutkind Quotes

I think the most important thing that young people should be taught at school is how they can decide what they're being told is true.

You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.

I've always been a believer in research. It's great to have an instinctual human reaction to a character, too, of course, but it has to be countered with knowledge and understanding.

At least half my writing time is spent researching. So for every hour I'm actually clicking on the keyboard, I'm spending another hour trying to figure out some tiny detail I need answered.

You have to have really wide reading habits and pay attention to the news and just everything that's going on in the world: you need to. If you get this right, then the writing is a piece of cake.

We should teach the students, as well as executives, how to conduct experiments, how to examine data, and how to use these tools to make better decisions.

I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.

Intelligence involves analysis of raw reports, not merely their enumeration or weighing them by the pound. Analysis, in turn, involves finding independent means of corroborating the reports.

One of the first things we should teach every student is not to believe everything they read and hear.

In my opinion, it helps enormously to know why something is true, rather than being told it is true, for why should you believe me? Never believe anything on the authority of a single person but seek confirmation — and reason is the best confirmation

I think there are ways that graduate students can fact-check their work. I think there are ways that we can do this that don't require massive amounts of resources.

The heart and soul of good writing is research; you should write not what you know but what you can find out about.

My work is very carefully researched. Sometimes I have to ditch an idea because I can't prove it.

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.

I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.

You shouldn't use anything as the sole source for anything, in my view.

For me, writing essays is very much about processing ideas and offering them up to the reader so that they are fully cooked.

I am a writer and editor with a passion for true storytelling. To me, science matters, research matters and knowledge matters, whatever the field.

Someone once told me to believe 5 percent of what everybody tells you.

Knowledge consists in understanding the evidence that establishes the fact, not in the belief that it is a fact.

We’ve learned our lesson. We are not going to take any more intelligence at face value.

It is the mark of a greatly educated person to be deeply moved by statistics.

Just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science

If you believe everything you read, better not read.

When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.