A Quote by Michael Shermer
... In a free society, skeptics are the watchdogs against irrationalism - the consumer advocates of ideas. Debunking is not simply the divestment of bunk; its utility is in offering a better alternative, along with a lesson on how thinking goes wrong.
Related Quotes
The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.
There's nothing wrong with commercial art. There's nothing wrong with consumer society. There's nothing wrong with advertising. There's nothing wrong with shopping and spending money and being paid. There's nothing wrong with any of these things. These are things we do. I just think it's important to look at them from a different perspective - to see how bizarre and banal these rituals we partake in are. It's just important to think about them, I think, and to carry on. Life is about retrospection, and I think that goes for every facet of life.
We know better than to think that Republicans can win only on the failures of Democrats. It still comes down to a contest of ideas, which is really good news, ladies and gentlemen, because when it's about ideas, the advantage goes to us. Against their dreary backdrop of arrogant bureaucracies, pointless mandates, reckless borrowing, willful retreat from the world and all that progressives have in store for us, the Republican Party stands as a great enduring alternative party.
It is not enough to criticize society without offering a workable alternative.
It's wrong to criticize government without offering a possible alternative.
Few places in American culture have made as effective a case for entrepreneurship than hip-hop. Hip-hop tells young people that our society is offering very limited options for youth. And that while society points to a radical decline in living wage jobs for youth and meaningful and affordable education, hip-hop is offering an alternative legitimate economy that is giving youth hope.
Islam has a total organization of life that is completely different from ours; it embraces simply everything,...There is a very marked subordination of woman to man; there is a very tightly knit criminal law, indeed, a law regulating all areas of life, that is opposed to our modern ideas about society. One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a pluralistic society.
The pro-gun advocates point to the 2nd amendment of America's Constitution, citing Americans' right to bear arms as a protection against tyrants. Pro-Bitcoin advocates want protection against tyrants, too. The difference is how these two groups define tyranny.
Yes, believers and non-believers and skeptics can all live together and get along. But there cannot be an imperialistic imposition of religion by the state or by the church. All people must be equal--believers, skeptics, disbelievers, atheists, and those who chose religion. Unless we are all deemed equal, and unless the morality of disbelief is deemed the equivalent of the morality of belief, we will simply be tolerated, and that is not the American way.
Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer.
[on the theory of the firm] It is exactly analogous to the analysis of the reactions of a consumer by means of indifferent curves. Indeed, a consumer is merely a 'firm' whose product is 'utility.'
Congenital naysayers are among the greatest stumbling blocks to thinking free. Rather than imagining how a new idea might possibly work, they instinctively think of all the reasons why it won't. They sincerely believe that they are doing everyone a favor by reducing the amount of time spent on bad or foolish ideas. But what they really do is undermine the creativity that can be harvested from thinking free.
I remember sitting in my room and thinking of where it all went wrong and how I ended up losing control of everything, and I realized I hadn't asked myself one question: And then what? That was my most important lesson. I learned to think about the consequences before the action and that saves me, to this day, from a lot of trouble. If you play it down the line, you'll start making better choices.
The sin of worldliness is a preoccupation with the things of this temporal life. It's accepting and going along with the views and practices of society around us without discerning if they are biblical. I believe that the key to our tendencies toward worldliness lies primarily in the two words “going along”. We simply go along with the values and practices of society.
I truly believe that writing is a continuum--so the different genres and forms are simply stops along the same continuum. Different ideas that need to be expressed sometimes require different forms for the ideas to float better.
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.
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