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Independent Thought Quotes

Quotes tagged as "independent-thought" Showing 1-30 of 113
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Anne Frank
“People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn't stop you from having your own opinion.”
Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Albert Einstein
“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
Albert Einstein

Leo Tolstoy
“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking...”
Leo Tolstoy

Bob Marley
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.
None but ourselves can free our minds.”
Bob Marley

Albert Einstein
“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
Albert Einstein

Christopher Hitchens
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”
Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

Mahatma Gandhi
“You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”
Mahatma Gandhi

A.A. Milne
“[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business."

(The Record Lie)”
A.A. Milne, If I May

Benjamin Franklin
“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”
Benjamin Franklin

Emma Goldman
“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
Emma Goldman

Adrienne Rich
“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.”
Adrienne Rich

A.A. Milne
“The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. A second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. A first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.”
A.A. Milne

Hermann Hesse
“Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.”
Hermann Hesse, Demian

Albert Einstein
“Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.”
Albert Einstein

Banksy
“Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.”
Banksy, Wall and Piece

Sue Grafton
“Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.”
Sue Grafton

Galileo Galilei
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
Galileo Galilei

Christopher Hitchens
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. - Hitchens 3:16”
Christopher Hitchens

“Inevitably it follows that anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes an authority or established convention': a rebel. ...And if enough people come to agree with—and follow—the REBEL, we now have a DEVIL. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have ... GREATNESS.”
Nicholas Tharcher, Rebels & Devils; A Tribute to Christopher S. Hyatt

Anaïs Nin
“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.”
Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

Banksy
“A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.”
Banksy, Wall and Piece

Albert Einstein
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.”
Albert Einstein

Emma Goldman
“Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.”
Emma Goldman

Robert Louis Stevenson
“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

Elizabeth Gaskell
“I'll not listen to reason... reason always means what someone else has got to say.”
Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford

Miguel Ruiz
“Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system.”
Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

Aesop
“Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.”
Aesop

Albert Einstein
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth”
Albert Einstein

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