Saturday, July 2, 2022
Dick Rozek
Critical Thinking
Since young adulthood I’ve been absorbed in the question of why we Americans refuse to educate our people properly from childhood on. Now in my nineties I’ve narrowed it down. Even our prestigious universities have lowered the bars of their once esteemed curricula taught even while requiring ever more tuition and costs while other nations are teaching critical thinking and helping students pay the cost. I hope you’re interested because I believe that for America it’s the way out of the depths of despair, ignorance, and sometimes intentional mismanagement. Herein I’ve opted to explain by using witty, even brilliant, observations by others. It’s imperative that we start earlier and continue to teach much more critical thinking. For example:
“It’s a universal law: intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Only the educated are free.” -Epictetus
You don’t know what you don’t know.
Arrogance combined with ignorance, is a very toxic combination.
“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.” -Bob Dylan“The greatest evil in our country today is not racism but ignorance.” Septima Poinsette Clark (d. 1987) was an African American educator and civil rights activist.
Only people who aren’t happy with themselves are unkind to others.
“The highest form of ignorance is rejecting something you don't know anything about.” – Wayne Dyer
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you use to change the world.” -Nelson Mandela
“Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful trait of a human being.” -Kahlil Gibran
“With fame I became more and more stupid which, of course, is very common among men.” -Albert Einstein
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure” -Mark Twain
“When Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” -Sinclair Lewis
“There are only two things that might be infinite: the universe and human stupidity.”
-Albert Einstein (He followed that by noting that he had no confidence that the universe is infinite.)
“The whole problem with this world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people are full of doubts.” -Bertrand Russell
“We are all born ignorant and work hard to remain stupid.”-Ben Franklin
“If we could learn to like ourselves even a little maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.”
-John Steinbeck
“How beautiful it is to find someone who asks nothing but your company.” -Brigitte Nicole
“Our worst fault is our preoccupation with the faults of others.” -Kahlil Gibran
“Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.” -Kahlil Gibran
“Jesus was sent here to make the human heart a temple and the soul an altar and the mind a priest.”
-Kahlil Gibran
“Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.” –Roy T. Bennett
The death of a thinker is more influential than the death of a leader.
Just because I disagree with you does not mean I hate you.
“Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success.” -William Saroyan
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
Noisy ignorance is contagious: people who lack knowledge about an issue yet still feel compelled to talk about it.
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” Robert Frost
“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend.” -Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
“Has it not occurred to us yet that we cannot remain where and how we are? That we must find a way to reorient our existence to live in sustainable connection with the rest of life?” – Marianne Williamson
“Our knowledge can only be finite while it seems our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.” -Karl Popper
“There have been many great souls unknown to fame as many of the most famous.” -Ben Franklin
“When you learn, teach. When you get, give.” – Maya Angelou
How beautiful to find a heart that loves you without asking for anything but to be okay.
“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” -Dalai Lama
“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” -Jonathan Swift
“A liberal: someone too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”-Robert Frost
“Throughout history and even today our world of humans continues to be run by madmen. The Washingtons and Jeffersons, the Lincolns and Churchills are indeed a rare breed.” -Rashid Abourizik
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.” -Alexandre Dumas
Successful people are aways looking for the opportunity to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, “what’s in it for me?”
Too often in life we look for permission to do the right thing.
“To ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important thing is friendship.” -Epicurus
“It is by those who suffered that our world is most advanced.” -Thich Nhat Hanh
“Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most. -Buddha
“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” -Thomas Paine
If you’ve read this far, thanks. All of us need more stability right now. I hope that in a small way these thoughts and words help. COMPASSION and KINDNESS (taught by Jesus) are the key. -Dick Rozek
And, of course, a little humor:
“Facts are stubborn but statistics are more pliable” -Mark Twain
‘My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.” -Woody Allen