"Critical thinking is more than a set of skills and processes and there are many different skills and actions that may be involved in critical thinking; Emotion and emotional climate (two different things) are relevant and may need to be to be taken into account; Critical thinking is nurtured in its development. Nurturing might imply that it is best developed in a challenging environment which is relatively free of threat;"
"The last thing the men behind the curtain want is a conscious informed public capable of critical thinking. Which is why a continually fraudulent zeitgeist is output via religion, the mass media, and the educational system. They seek to keep you in a distracted, naive bubble. And they are doing a damn good job of it."
"The Bush regime doesnt believe in funding education because if you fund education you will have a more educated populace. If you have a more educated populace, you will have critical thinking. If you have critical thinking, you cannot push this agenda that they have and you wont have as many people that are so willing to serve in the armed forces for Dick Cheney."
"A more detailed, but still uncontroversial comprehensive, definition is that philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of these three elements..."
"It is impossible to learn much in todays world without letting somebody else crunch the numbers and offer us explanations. And teachers are sources of necessary information. But how we choose our "authorities" and place a value on such information, is just another skill rarely taught in our education systems. Its little wonder that to most folk, sound bites and talking heads are enough to count as experts. […] Teaching is reinforcing the appeal to authority, where anybody who seems more intelligent than you must ultimately be right. […] We educators must simply role-model critical thinking. […] Educators themselves have to be prepared to show that "evidence" and "answers" are two separate things by firmly believing that, themselves."
"The purpose of critical thinking... is rethinking: that is, reviewing, evaluating, and revising thought."