My Belief: Essays on Life and Art. Hermann Hesse

With all peoples the word and writing are holy and magical; naming and writing were originally magical operations, magical conquests of nature through the spirit, and everywhere the gift of writing was thought to be of divine origin. With most peoples, writing and reading were secret and holy arts reserved for the priesthood alone.

[…]

Today all this is apparently completely changed. Today, so it seems, the world of writing and of the intellect is open to everyone… Today, so it seems, being able to read and write is little more than being able to breathe… Writing and the book have apparently been divested of every special dignity, every enchantment, every magic… From a liberal, democratic point of view, this is progress and is accepted as a matter of course; from other points of view, however, it is a devaluation and vulgarization of the spirit.

Letter to M. de Menonville (October 1789). Edmund Burke

You can never plan the future by the past.

Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand

Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act... of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment...

Non-thinking is an act of annihilation... an attempt to wipe out reality. But... reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say 'It is,’ you are refusing to say 'I am.' By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: 'Who am I to know?'—he is declaring: 'Who am I to live?'

Creative Problem Solving, Students’ skills in tackling real-life problems. OECD

Problems are situations with no obvious solution, and solving problems requires thinking and learning in action. Problem solving “involves initiating, usually on the basis of hunches or feelings, experimental interactions with the environment to clarify the nature of a problem and potential solutions”, so that the problem-solver “can learn more […] about the nature of the problem and the effectiveness of their strategies”, “modify their behaviour and launch a further round of experimental interactions with the environment” (Raven, 2000, p. 54).

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In most problems that students practice in class or when studying for an exam, the information needed to solve the problem is provided at the outset. By contrast, solving real-life problems often requires identifying the pieces of information available in the environment/context that would be most useful for solving the problem.

[…]

All teachers can create opportunities to develop problem-solving competence. For instance, thinking habits, such as careful observation, awareness about one’s working process, or critical self-evaluation, can be instilled in students … Because the skills and dispositions that underpin successful problem solving in real life are not specific to particular subjects, students who learn to master them in several curricular contexts will be better equipped to use them outside of school as well.

Il Sappore della Vita. Giovanni Cucci

La dimensione del tempo dice dunque molto circa la veritá e consistenza di un pensiero e di un desiderio. Il filósofo Hegel notava che per valutare l’effettiva profonditá di un pensatore é necessario mettere due secoli tra lui e noi. Il tempo ne mostrerá la profonditá e il valore speculativo.

El Arco y la Lira. Octavio Paz

Apenas desviamos los ojos de lo poético para fijarlos en el poema, nos asombra la multitud de formas que asume ese ser que pensábamos único. ¿Cómo asir la poesía si cada poema se ostenta como algo diferente e irreducible? La ciencia de la literatura pretende reducir a géneros la vertiginosa pluralidad del poema.

[...]

Clasificar no es entender. Y menos aún comprender. Como todas las clasificaciones, las nomenclaturas son útiles de trabajo. Pero son instrumentos que resultan inservibles en cuanto se les quiere emplear para tareas más sutiles que la mera ordenación externa. Gran parte de la crítica no consiste sino en esta ingenua y abusiva aplicación de las nomenclaturas tradicionales.

Cultivating Creative-Mindedness. Guy Claxton

If we are truly going to prepare young people for the 21st century, teachers have to learn to teach history in a way that cultivates skepticism, maths in a way that develops curiosity, and English in a way that stretches and strengthens children’s imaginations.

For example, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote “History is the story written by the winners”. Get students to discuss this, and then to critique their textbook in terms of the unacknowledged opinions and values of the writer. That gets them to practice being appropriately skeptical about text, not in awe of it. Then get them to write about a historical event they have been discussing through the eyes of three different protagonists – to stretch their “empathy muscles”.

Or: if you are teaching younger children the colors of the rainbow, get them to look intently at a picture of a real rainbow and argue about how many colors they can see. (There aren’t seven colors in a rainbow; that’s just a convention.) Get them to cut it up in new ways, and think up beautiful names for the new color-bands they have chosen. This stretches their ability to look carefully, discuss accurately and think imaginatively. If you want, you can tell them the conventional colors, but for heaven’s sake don’t confuse them by saying they are “right”.

Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand

Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not... To remain alive, he must act... To remain alive, he must think.

But to think is an act of choice... man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct...

In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival—so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think.'

Cultivating Creative-Mindedness. Guy Claxton

Teachers strongly influence the mental skills that students activate in their classrooms. In mathematics, you can teach “area” in a way that builds students’ capacity for problem-finding – not just problem-solving – and their dispositions for curiosity and collaboration. Or you can teach “area” in a way that strengthens their inclination to be passive, dependent and instrumental. You can teach the history of World War II in a way that cultivates empathy and tolerance. Or you can teach it as if there were a single “correct” point of view…

I was chatting to a group of history teachers the other day, and we got on to the subject of young people’s lack of critical awareness as they browsed the Internet. They read things on Wikipedia and assumed they were true. We agreed that a healthy skepticism towards “knowledge claims” was a pretty useful habit of mind in the 21st century. I said to them: “Just reassure me, will you, that the way you are teaching history to your 9th-graders is designed to develop the skeptical disposition towards knowledge claims that you are now (quite rightly) complaining that they don’t have…” And I have to tell you that they went a bit quiet. Because it had never occurred to them that a history topic could be used as an exercise-machine for stretching a vital 21st-century attitude such as skepticism – as opposed to a dysfunctional inclination to believe everything they read. You can’t opt out and say “I just teach knowledge”. However you teach, every teacher is a mind trainer, somewhere on a continuum from building compliance to building creative intelligence.

La fenomenología del espíritu. Hegel

La impaciencia se afana en lo que es imposible: desea llegar al fin sin detenerse en los medios para hacerlo. La duración del viaje debe ser soportada, ya que cada momento es necesario; y además, hay que detenerse en cada momento, ya que cada uno de ellos constituye de por sí una experiencia única e individual.

The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools. Richard Paul and Linda Elder

Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or downright prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.

Critical thinking is that mode of thinking about any subject, content, or problem in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them.

A well cultivated critical thinker:

1. Raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely;
2. Gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively;
3. Comes to well-reasoned conclusions and standards;
4. Thinks open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and
5. Communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.

Critical thinking... entails effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism.

Filosofía Aquí y Ahora. José Pablo Feinmann

... el principio revolucionario de los ideólogos era irritar a las masas llevándolas al conocimiento de la situación de indignidad en que vivían. En la medida en que tomaban conciencia de esa situación de indignidad, la irritabilidad crecía y la rebelión estaba más cercana. La rebelión es imposible cuando no existe la conciencia de la indignidad. Lo que hace imposible la conciencia de la indignidad es creer que vivimos en el mejor de los mundos posibles.
...
Marx habrá de volcarse críticamente contra de la religión, y va a escribir una de las frases más conocidas, más mal interpretadas, más bastardeadas de toda su obra, una frase que dice: "La religión es el opio del pueblo". La frase es muy fácil de entender. Yo hoy, podría decirles a ustedes: "Internet es el opio del pueblo" y ustedes me entenderían muy bien lo que estoy diciendo; Podría decir, "Bailando por la escoba es el opio del pueblo" o "Show ping pong a las 21:30 de la noche, es el opio del pueblo". O sea, hay muchas maneras de opiar al pueblo. Para Marx, la manera fundamental era la religión... ¿Por qué? Porque la lucha de Marx va ha hacer que el proletariado, que los humillados de ésta tierra, tomen conciencia de su situación ignominiosa.
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Marx va a decir: tenemos que criticar lo que pasa en la tierra. La filosofía de la praxis, lo que plantea es que, hay que revolucionar las estructuras por las cuales los hombres son sometidos y esas estructuras, finalmente, en su gran formulación que va a dar Marx en "El Capital", en 1867, son las relaciones de producción, el sistema de producción capitalista.
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Por crítica Marx entiende, tornar claro algo que estaba oscuro; una toma de conciencia. Digamos, una persona puede padecer toda su vida una situación ignominiosa... Pero si en algún momento no se da cuenta de esa situación, no toma conciencia de su situación de ignominia, siempre le va a parecer natural lo que está padeciendo; es necesario que en algún momento tome conciencia de lo que le está pasando. Cuando toma conciencia de lo que le está pasando, ahí está viendo su situación desde una perspectiva "crítica".

La perspectiva crítica, es aquella que nos dice si lo que nos pasa está bien o está mal, si lo vamos a tolerar o no lo vamos a tolerar, si vamos a seguir así o no vamos a seguir así; en consecuencia, la crítica es aquello que acompaña a la conciencia; la conciencia debe ser siempre crítica, en la medida en que la conciencia no debe rendirse ante la realidad, no debe dejarse sofocar por la realidad, sino que la conciencia debe aclarar, juzgar, decidir sobre la realidad y en consecuencia luego es uno el que también sigue o no a esa conciencia, eso depende del coraje de cada uno. A veces nuestra conciencia nos señala cosas que preferimos ensordecer, para no seguirla porque simplemente tenemos miedo de hacerlo... Ahí es cuando prendemos algunos "aparatos" que tenemos en casa.