7 Quotes by Anthony Weston

If Churchill recommends optimism, who are you or I to quibble?

It isn’t a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else.

Airy elaboration just loses everyone in a fog of words.

Be ready to be surprised. Be ready to hear evidence and arguments for positions you may not like. Be ready, even, to let yourself be swayed. True thinking is an open-ended process. The whole point is that you don’t know when you start where you’ll find yourself in the end.

In general, if you can’t imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you probably just don’t understand it yet.

Truly informed sources rarely expect others to accept their conclusions simply because they assert them.

Typically we learn to “argue” by assertion. That is, we tend to start with our conclusions – our desires or opinions – without a whole lot to back them up. And it works, sometimes, at least when we’re very young. What could be better? Real argument, by contrast, takes time and practice. Marshaling our reasons, proportioning our conclusions to the actual evidence, considering objections, and all the rest – these are acquired skills. We have to grow up a little.