83 Quotes About Independent-thought

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.

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.

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

Freedom of speech is unnecessary if the people to whom it is granted do not think for themselves.

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

To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.

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.

I'll not listen to reason... reason always means what someone else has got to say.

The way most people use and are used by their minds gives substance to the belief that we are barely evolved apes.