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The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.

Wendy Kaminer

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Wendy Kaminer
Age: 74
Born: 1949
Born: December 28
Journalist
Lawyer
Writer
Real
Certainty
Like
Presses
Press
Popular
Capacity
Biases
Doubt
Thrives
Public
Affirmation
Science
Thrive

More quotes by Wendy Kaminer

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Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.
Wendy Kaminer
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Patriotism does not oblige us to acquiesce in the destruction of liberty. Patriotism obliges us to question it, at least.
Wendy Kaminer
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If all issues are personalized, we lose our capacity to entertain ideas, to generalize from our own or someone else's experiences, to think abstractly. We substitute sentimentality for thought.
Wendy Kaminer
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The dissemination of pseudoscience, including such things as the fascination with near-death experiences and the growing belief by Americans -- 34 percent of them -- in reincarnation are dangerous. They help to break down the standards of reason.
Wendy Kaminer
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Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice - a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.
Wendy Kaminer
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Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.
Wendy Kaminer
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Jargon seems to be the place where the right brain and the left brain meet.
Wendy Kaminer
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The magical thinking encouraged by any belief in the supernatural, combined with the vilification of rationality and skepticism, is more conducive to conspiracy theories than it is to productive political debate.
Wendy Kaminer
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In this climate - with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace - making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.
Wendy Kaminer
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We don't cut off the hands of thieves or castrate rapists. Why must we murder murderers?
Wendy Kaminer
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One of the reasons I'm drawn to civil libertarianism as opposed to communitarianism is that I don't worry so much about the rights of the majority a majority is quite capable of enforcing and protecting its own rights.
Wendy Kaminer
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As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought.
Wendy Kaminer
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There are only two states of being in the world of codependency - recovery and denial.
Wendy Kaminer
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I don't think of myself as having a particular role. I'm lucky enough to be able to make my living essentially by expressing my opinions. But, you know, I think the world would manage quite well if I weren't doing it.
Wendy Kaminer
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Like heterosexuality, faith in immaterial realities is popularly considered essential to individual morality.
Wendy Kaminer
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Whatever lessons we take from this dreadful attack (on the World Trade Center and Pentagon), we should never forget that it was, after all, a faith based initiative.
Wendy Kaminer
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What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.
Wendy Kaminer
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The phenomenal success of the recovery movement reflects two simple truths that emerge in adolescence: all people love to talk about themselves, and most people are mad at their parents. You don't have to be in denial to doubt that truths like these will set us free.
Wendy Kaminer
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For the most part, executions happen in obscurity. If people did hear about executions, if they were publicized, even televised, I fear more would enjoy them than be repelled by them.
Wendy Kaminer
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Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten.
Wendy Kaminer