ah yes the beauty of an education to open the mind to all sorts of things that might not have ever come your way in a day to day world. This is why an uneducated society is so dangerous, they can be fooled and led so easily. I grew up in the 60's and the mantra then and still the most important thing to pass on to our children is "QUESTION AUTHORITY". As we have seen in history,leaders that were thought to be correct for the time being later proved out to make grave mistakes.We are all human and authorities don't always have the correct answers.
Another good quote to always keep in mind is " that a mind is like a parachute, it only functions when open." I think sometimes its easy to be so eager and open when you are young and soaking up all the knowledge you can, then as you age and fall into patterns or ruts, your mind tends to close up unless you keep a vigilant watch on yourself.Of course if you always stay a consciously thinking individual you will stay open minded but we always have to remember to question everything to see how it feels to our experiences, to our "gut reaction", to our knowledge base we have amassed so far. I think thats what was so brave and "out of the box" type thinking of these philosophers for their time, when the majority of the people were like sheep, being able to be whippped to a frenzy over anything they didn't understand and felt fear over.How many people were burned at the stake for things the masses couldn't give a pat answer for? And a lot of times for just the rantings of one infuencial person. Scary times that are not that far back in our history. And history tends to repeat itself.