“Critical thinking means to open the road for the freedom of worldview from prejudice.”
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Zafar Mirzo 149
1972Related quotes
Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968)
Context: Intellectual freedom is essential to human society — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture.
But freedom of thought is under a triple threat in modern society—from the deliberate opium of mass culture, from cowardly, egotistic, and philistine ideologies, and from the ossified dogmatism of a bureaucratic oligarchy and its favorite weapon, ideological censorship. Therefore, freedom of thought requires the defense of all thinking and honest people.
"Irish Essays. A Speech at Eton" (1882)
“Freedom of the Press,
if it means anything at all,
means the freedom
to criticize and oppose”
Source: Practical Ethics, 3rd Edition (2011), Ch. 3: Equality for Animals? (p. 49)