Maybe we could think of science as being like a nuclear chain reaction in which people and ideas bounce off each other, and if critical mass is reached, a new field is formed.
There's less critical thinking going on in this country on a Main Street level - forget about the media - than ever before. We've never needed people to think more critically than now, and they've taken a big nap.
I think it's fairly unique to define the end goal of K-12 schooling as helping students become better thinkers, more creative thinkers, and to organize the whole school around creative and critical thinking.
Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that's working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.
I was brought up in a home environment where I was taught to think critically and was encouraged to seek answers to questions about my faith.
I always find myself very distrustful of intense crowd phenomena, and I think those are things that we should always try to question, especially critically.
In general, I agree with Socrates that what democracies badly need is the examined life, and we need to think critically about ourselves.
Education is far less about a set of facts than a way of thinking, than learning how to critically think. And therefore, what I always think should be the basis of education is not answers but questions.
Jobs are critically important, but looking at economic change through the impact on jobs has always been a difficult way to think about economic progress.
Being able to have a laboratory on Mars, being able to have some sort of sustained human presence on Mars in the future, I think, is critically important for science.
I won't criticise anyone else's statements, and the public will make up their own minds. And if the public think that any side or any individual has strayed too far away from what's expected of public representatives, then they'll make that judgement.
In the past, the U.S. was the centre of the world, where everything was happening. I think my stories have always sought to question this, maybe even criticise it.
I think whatever dress you wear, people will criticise you. Different people have different opinions.
I think we have a high responsibility to base any criticisms that we have on a fair and honest statement of the facts, and that nominees should not be subjected to distortions of their record, taking things they've done out of context.
I just think - the Midwest, if you grow up there, you're deathly afraid of putting on airs. Any time a Midwesterner criticizes someone, it's usually involving some form of being too big for your britches.
I don't happen to subscribe to the notion that everybody who criticizes Tom Daschle is criticizing Tim Johnson. I think that's a bit of a stretch.
I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it.
Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?
I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that's not in me. I want to lift people up.
I do think the patriotic thing to do is to critique my country. How else do you make a country better but by pointing out its flaws?
