Education

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." Christopher Hitchens

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are." Henry Louis Mencken

"The first bachelor generation is just climbing the university chairs. People who are perfectly trained in their craft, who have internalized the hegemonic ideology, and who are good advertising media for a system that needs academic confirmation in order to be able to continue to say 'democracy'. This generation already determines what 'good science' is. It fills journals, conference programs, and so eventually textbooks, lectures, and seminars - with topics, perspectives, and terms it has taken from the political agenda and the tenders linked to it, and which it doesn't question because it couldn't learn that anywhere." Michael Meyen

"Ideally, every child throughout their entire schooling should be repeatedly told: "You are being indoctrinated. We have yet to develop an education system that is not an indoctrination system. We are sorry, but this is the best we can do. What is taught here is a mixture of common prejudices and the decisions of this particular culture. The slightest glance at history shows how unstable these must be. You are taught by people who were able to fit into a thought pattern set by their predecessors. It is a self-sustaining system. Those among you who are more robust and individual than others are encouraged to leave the classroom and find ways to educate yourselves – to form your own judgments. Those who stay must constantly remember that they are being shaped and patterned to fit the narrow and special needs of this particular society."" Doris Lessing

"In the school system, they don’t want us to learn about money, because they just want to pump out good employees that do what they’re told. If you look at school, it’s opposite of what it takes to be successful. In real life: ‘don’t make a mistake’, ‘do as you’re told’, ‘take tests by yourself’, ‘don’t cooperate’, ‘do it by yourself’, ‘do it alone’, ‘there’s only one right answer’… No, there’s tons of answers to a problem. So you come out of school scared to death of making a mistake, you do everything on your own, you don’t cooperate, there’s no synergy, there’s no brainstorming. So I think, people come out of school paralyzed. I think the school system is criminal in that it kills a child’s spirit of learning. A child goes into school all excited, ‘Oh, I’m gonna learn and it’s gonna be great’, and then, the teacher says ‘Sit down and shut up, don’t talk, we don’t care what you’re interested in’" Kim Kiyosaki

"A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones." Philip Dormer Stanhop, Lord Chesterfield

"One reason that freedom of speech is so important is that doubt is the foundation of science." Naval Ravikant

"It requires a high degree of mastery to turn the sword of truth against oneself in order to free oneself from one's own blindness." Unbekannter Verfasser

"When all experts agree, you need to watch out." Bertrand Russell

"Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world." Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin

"If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it’s not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true." Neil deGrasse Tyson

"The conviction that it is important to believe this or that, even if a free inquiry would not support the belief, is one which is common to almost all religions and which inspires all systems of state education...A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering. But at present, in most countries, education aims at preventing the growth of such a habit, and men who refuse to profess belief in some system of unfounded dogmas are not considered suitable as teachers of the young… The world that I should wish to see would be one freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing that happiness for all is to be derived rather from cooperation than from strife. I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than at imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence. The world needs open hearts and open minds, and it is not through rigid systems, whether old or new, that these can be derived." Bertrand Russell

""scientism is where people turn science into a kind of religion. It becomes a kind of dogmatic belief system. The irony is that a lot of people think that religion is dogmatic and science is free-thinking, but actually, in my experience, some of the most dogmatic people I know are people who've made science into a kind of religion. We still have flat earthers, we have people that don't believe in vaccinations, and what do we do about it?"" Rupert Sheldrake

"It may be boldly asked where can the man be found, possessing the extraordinary gifts of Newton, who could suffer himself to be deluded by such a hocus-pocus, if he had not in the first instance willfully deceived himself? Only those who know the strength of self-deception, and the extent to which it sometimes trenches on dishonesty, are in a condition to explain the conduct of Newton and of Newton’s school. To support his unnatural theory Newton heaps fiction upon fiction, seeking to dazzle where he cannot convince. In whatever way or manner may have occurred this business, I must still say that I curse this modern theory of Cosmogony, and hope that perchance there may appear, in due time, some young scientist of genius, who will pick up courage enough to upset this universally disseminated delirium of lunatics." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe