It's to be a person who's able to shoot little arrows into sacred cows and knock politicians off their pedestals, to look out for hypocrisy, advocate for all sorts of things from social justice to...

The curiosity of the human mind is essential if you want citizens who think rather than accept the first nonsense they come to.

You have all this education theory, and people try to make larger statements than maybe what their data would back up, because they've done these small experiments that are tied to a very particular...

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

But it was also the best mistake I've ever made, because what it did was hopefully allow a whole new generation to make up their own minds about Scientology and for that I make no apology.

I still don't like authority exercised without reason. But they laugh at you at Cambridge if you say that sort of thing. For them, the law is a system of rules not that different from mathematics.

Before I take an offer seriously, I do my own research.

I try not to pay attention to all the hype.

I don't think what you hear on talk radio is representative of America.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for rubbish.

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem. We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.

Sentence first, verdict afterwards.

Someone else is going to read for me or go at my place to the mosque, and/or to tell me you shouldn't take anything from the West because the West is the enemy and so on. It is to me to decide. I am...

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

A prudent question is one - half of wisdom.

An educated man is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

How sad it is that these great gentlemen should believe what anyone tells them and do not choose to judge for themselves! But it is always so.

I buy about $1,500 worth of papers every month. Not that I trust them. I'm looking for the crack in the fabric.

Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.

When thought is too weak to be simply expressed it's clear proof that it should be rejected.

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

When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.

If you follow the rules, it's your own fault.

To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.

Superstition would seem to be simply cowardice in regard to the supernatural.

Dumb ideas come from people who have dumb brains

Criticism involves taking a position, Mr. Day. How long has it been since you took a considered position on anything important?

I don't so much hope that any reader "agrees" with me, as I hope to haunt them, to trouble their sense of how things actually are.