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Clear thinking
The book I am reading about clear thinking is good. It's suitable for everyone not just school children. Some of the words and phrases date the book but not the context. Here are some more extracts.
Scientific investigators, often in the teeth of ignorance, suspicion, prejudice and even persecution, have by their labours and researches during the last three centuries immeasurably increased our knowledge of the resources and powers of Nature. ...
But the knowledge of man, of the springs of his conduct, of his relations to his fellow-men singly or in groups, and the felicitous regulation of human intercourse in the interests of harmony, fairness and peace of mind have made no such advance. ...
Ignorance, suspicion and prejudice are still rife: and when we watch the efforts made in some quarters of the western world to reorganise human relationships to fit new conditions, we may well wonder whether such progress as we have made is not an illusion, and whether the methods employed do not belong more to the Dark Ages than to the twentieth century. ...
Our material progress has outstripped our mental progress. ...
The next formidable obstacle to honest thinking is laziness -- the reluctance to face the insupportable fatigue of thought. For thinking is a painful process: it requires effort. How easy it is for us to take the line of least resistance and allow others to do the thinking for us! How much easier it is to fall in with accepted opinion than to question it! Hence is derived the tendency to accept without question whatever one sees in print, or the expressed opinions of so-called 'authorities'; hence the credulity of the masses, their impressionability and susceptibility to suggestion. How fatally easy it is to succumb to the cleverly worded advertisement, the sophistries of the quack, the catchphrases of the politician, the slogans and axe-grinding propaganda of the popular Press!
Thought for today
Prejudice is a far more serious obstacle to overcome than illogicality, because our own personal feelings are involved.
RW Jepson, Clear Thinking. An Elementary Course of preparation for Citizenship, 1936
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