Noctua

“Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything. We are typically ready to believe that our ways, our beliefs, our religion, our politics are better than theirs, or that our God-given rights trump theirs or that our interests require defensive or pre-emptive strikes against them. In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other. It is because of ideas about what the others are like, or who we are, or what our interests or rights require, that we go to war, or oppress others with a good conscience, or even sometimes acquiesce in our own oppression by others. When these beliefs involve the sleep of reason, critical awakening is the antidote.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“Reflection opens the avenue to criticism, and the folkways may not like criticism. In this way, ideologies become closed circles, primed to feel outraged by the questioning mind.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“No future triumph or metamorphosis can justify the pitiful blighting of a human being against his will.”
― Peter Wessel Zapffe

“An argument is valid when there is no way—meaning no possible way—that the premises, or starting points, could be true without the conclusion being true”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy