Now, one can learn a great deal from television, but not how to think. Thinking requires dissecting an idea, like a laboratory frog, into its component parts, to determine how, or if, they fit together. Thinking requires the detection and tackling of hidden assumptions. Thinking requires that evidence be at hand, available for reference, not ephemeral, like a moving picture. Thinking takes time, and quiet, and patience, and assiduity. Most important, thinking requires articulateness.

One cannot refine a thought unless one has the words to express it precisely. An idea may be sensed, but it cannot be tested except in words. Unless one has explored a politician's reasoning, one will not know if his rhetoric is sincere or specious. Until one has laid the appeals of salesmen under the cool beam of reason, until one has extracted the claim from the jingle, one can't know what to believe. One cannot evaluate intellectual propositions emotionally; one cannot feel the correct answer. One must think in words. And, unless one thinks, one will never have an idea of one's own; one will be, perhaps unknowingly, a puppet on somebody's string.

Carll Tucker
Saturday Review
September 15, 1979