In general, I think efforts to teach “critical thinking” are awful because they either a) teach something other than critical thinking, and/or b) rarely employ the sort of critical thinking skills the instructor is advocating for. Take this slide, for example, which I found online as part of a presentation on critical thinking.
Two of the quotes are inaccurate.
Einstein never said “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them,” although it is widely misattributed to him.
The likeliest explanation for the origin of this misquote goes back to the 1940s. In 1946, as chairman of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Einstein signed a fundraising telegram seeking money for an educational program about the atomic weapons that read, in part,
‘Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing power to make great decisions for good or evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. We scientists who released this immense power have an overwhelming responsibility in this world life-and-death struggle to harness the atom for the benefit of mankind and not for humanity’s destruction. We need two hundred thousand dollars at once for a nation-wide campaign to let people know that a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels. This appeal is sent to you only after long consideration of the immense crisis we face. … We ask your help at this fateful moment as a sign that we scientists do not stand alone.’ (Source: New York Times – May 25 1946, p.13 – ‘Atomic Education Urged by Einstein’)
The folks at Einstein’s Wikiquote page note that the version quoted on this slide doesn’t appear prior to about 1970 and likely originated from New Age spirtualist Ramm Dass (who also appears responsible for another widely circulated misquote from Einstein).
The quote attributed to Oliver Wendell “Homes” is also not accurate. First, the quote is often attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., but in fact something like it was said by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. What Holmes actually wrote, in his 1858 book The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table was,
Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
Personally, if I were looking for quotes to add to a critical thinking slide deck, I’d spend a few minutes just confirming their origins and wording. But that’s just me.