Unquestioned Assumptions Quotes

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.

Convictions are much more an enemy of the truth than lies.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

We may define "faith" as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith". We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions.

Conventional wisdom

Orthodoxy is a corpse that doesn't know it's dead.

Since the mass of mankind are too ignorant or too indolent to think seriously, if majorities are right it is by accident.

Denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.

The habit of an opinion often leads to the complete conviction of its truth, it hides the weaker parts of it, and makes us incapable of accepting the proofs against it.

From literature to ecology, from the escape velocity of galaxies to the greenhouse effect, from garbage disposal methods to traffic jams, everything is discussed in our world. But the democratic system, as if it were a given fact, untouchable by nature until the end of time, we don't discuss that.

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.

I'd rather sink with a bad theory than swim with muddy pragmatism.

Be careful of hubris about ideas—especially your own. Remember always, that there is one commonality between all the good ideas that were ever created and all the bad ideas: The people you created them thought that they were good ideas.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

Truths turn into dogmas the moment they are disputed.

People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe.

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.

It's quite difficult to get through to the people who are really committed to these anti-progressive beliefs.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. The moment we want to disbelieve anything we have previously believed we suddenly discover not only that there is a mass of evidence against it but that this evidence was starting us in the face all the time.

The public knows that human beings are fallible. Only people blinded by ideology fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility.

The history of science shows that the progress of science has constantly been hampered by the tyrannical influence of certain conceptions that finally came to be considered as dogma. For this reason, it is proper to submit periodically to a very searching examination, principles that we have come to assume without any more discussion.