John Varner

“bitter recognition that his era had passed and the injury he had done to his family could not be undone and the moral failure that characterized his life had poisoned everything he touched and saw.”
― C.J. Box, The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

“Principled, informed arguments are a sign of intellectual health and vitality in a democracy.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

“the more specific reason that unskilled or incompetent people overestimate their abilities far more than others is because they lack a key skill called “metacognition.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

“These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything. In the United States and other developed nations, otherwise intelligent people denigrate intellectual achievement and reject the advice of experts. Not only do increasing numbers of laypeople lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters