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The critical
habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores,
because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated
in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators ... They are slow to
believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all
degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for
evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or
confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other.
They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of
cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of
which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens.
William Graham Sumner, Folkways, 1906
Originally
posted at
http://www.criticalthinking.org/. |
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Last
updated on
02/17/2008