Abid Uzair

“William James used to preach the “will to believe.” For
my part, I should wish to preach the “will to doubt.” None
of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of
vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of
truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all
sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our
own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite
bias, and cultivating a readiness to disregard any hypothesis
which has proved inadequate…
In religion and politics, on the contrary, though there is
as yet nothing approaching scientific knowledge, everybody
considers it de rigueur to have a dogmatic opinion, to be
backed up by inflicting starvation, prison, and war, and to
be carefully guarded from argumentative competition with
any different opinion.”
― Bertrand Russell, Free Thought and Official Propaganda

“Our system of education turns young people out of the schools able to read, but for the most part unable to weigh evidence or to form an independent opinion. They are then assailed, throughout the rest of their lives, by statements designed to make them believe all sorts of absurd propositions, such as that Blank’s pills cure all ills, that Spitzbergen is warm and fertile, and that Germans eat corpses.”
― Bertrand Russell, Free Thought and Official Propaganda

“One of their sting-elimination strategies is to pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true. If it is, there is little reason to be upset. Suppose, for example, that someone mocks us for being bald when we in fact are bald: “Why is it an insult,” Seneca asks, “to be told what is self-evident?”3”
― William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

“Education should have two objects: first, to give definite knowledge—reading and writing, languages and mathematics, and so on; secondly, to create those mental habits which will enable people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgments for themselves.”
― Bertrand Russell, Free Thought and Official Propaganda