Kevin Duffy on critics

Critics get a bad rap sometimes.  They're actually optimists who see room for improvement.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, March 6, 2022

Tom DiLorenzo on how the Left makes an argument

When a business school professor (actually a lawyer hired to preach left-wing politics to business students) initiated a new course called “Critical Thinking” at my former university I asked her what academic discipline she would be drawing on – philosophy, logic, political philosophy, economics, etc. Her answer was “Oh none of that; we will just criticize people like you.” 

Talking with many of her students over the years I have learned that they were taught nothing about how to structure a criticism by using logic, facts, and theory. Instead, they are taught to condemn, slander, libel, denounce, and smear anyone who voices disagreements with any of the standard leftist platitudes that all college students are bombarded with and have been since elementary school. Ruthless criticism, in other words, just as Marx himself advocated.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Your Marxist Revolutionary Sons and Daughters," LewRockwell.com, October 16, 2020

Eugene O'Neill on critics

Critics? I love every bone in their heads.

~ Eugene O'Neill

Theodore Roosevelt on patriotism and dissent

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

~ Theodore Roosevelt, 25th president

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
1922-1925

Scott Peck on the paths to reality and delusion

A life of total dedication to the truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged.  The only way that we can be certain that our map of reality is valid is to expose it to the criticism and challenge of other map-makers.  Otherwise we live in a closed system - within a bell jar, to use Sylvia Plath's analogy, rebreathing only our own fetid air, more and more subject to delusion.

~ M. Scott Peck, M.D., The Road Less Traveled, "Openness to Challenge," p. 52

Francis Ford Coppola on critics

Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most.

~ Francis Ford Coppola