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...

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.

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.

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.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most...

Democracy is a poor system

When students learn to wrestle with questions about purpose, audience, and genre, they develop a conceptual view of writing that has lifelong usefulness in any communicative context.

There have always been ignorant people, but they haven't always had college degrees to make them unaware of their ignorance. Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memorized...

The starting point to freedom is to begin questioning the cultural narrative you have been sold.

Truth is not a stereotype.

On occasion we stumble upon what seems to be a truth. Compared to the surrounding blackness, it sparkles and dazzles our eyes. But are these actually truths? Are our eyes really feasting upon light?...

Earthquake means destruction; dictator means destruction! In the case of earthquake, you need a strong building; in the case of dictator, you need an educated rational mind, because an irrational...

We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.

I just prefer my fiction with more teeth.

Democracy's fatal flaw: There are more dumb people than smart people. Welcome to the new Dark Ages!

The art of not reading is a very important one. [...] You should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. – A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones:...

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

We hear so often that we must read but what is more important and often not advised is to always think and question what we read. Reading, retaining and repeating is often called education. Wisdom is...

Non-fiction can distort

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop - out,...

Married people, for instance, are demonstrably happier than single people; does this mean that marriage causes happiness? Not necessarily. The data suggest that happy people are more likely to get...