Critical thinking is the development of cohesive and logical reasoning patterns. Stahl and Stahl, 1991.

"Broadly speaking, critical thinking is concerned with reason, intellectual honesty, and open-mindedness, as opposed too emotionalism, intellectual laziness, and closed-mindedness. Thus, critical thinking involves: following evidence where it leads; considering all possibilities; relying on reason rather than emotion; being precise; considering a variety of possible viewpoints and explanations; weighing the effects of motives and biases; being concerned more with finding the truth than with being right; not rejecting unpopular views out of hand; being aware of one's own prejudices and biases, and not allowing them to sway one's judgment."
Kurland, Daniel J. I Know What It Says . . . What does it Mean? 1995.

Critical thinking is "the art of thinking about your thinking while you are thinking in order to make your thinking better: more clear, more accurate, or more defensible."
Paul, Binker, Adamson, and Martin (1989)

Throughout my four years at Santa Clara University I have often walked into a lecture for the first time and met the same question. ‘What is critical thinking?’ To many students’ surprise, it is often difficult to succinctly word a response to this question. Although ‘critical thinking’ is a process of which we often speak, especially at institutions of higher education, it is a process that has been ingrained within students’ subconscious to the point that we no longer even remember what it is. This is much like cognition of networking. Castells postulates in his text, The Network Society, that networking has always been an integral part of the human experience. Understanding networking, through the form of creating a hyperlink text, is much like understanding critical thinking.
I chose the first quote because it directly addresses formation of logical reasoning patterns. While creating my hypertexts, I never formally addressed the logic of the connections I was making (either by hyperlinks or by choosing which points deserved to be on menus etc), however this comprehension of cohesion was central to the organization of my site.
The second quote spoke further to the cohesive aspect of creating a hypertext. Not only in-so-much as that in creating a webpage, one is creating written word we are also creating a live interaction between these ideas and concepts; by linking them in cyber space rather than using conjunctions and prepositions. This form of language and expression relies explicitly on the creators ability to put themselves in the readers’ shoes and understanding the importance of “following evidence where it leads; considering all possibilities.