Think for Yourself Quotes

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within.”

“Geniuses think productively, not reproductively. When confronted with a problem, they ask how many different ways can I look at it, how can I rethink the way I see it, and how many different ways can I solve it, instead of what have I been taught by someone else on how to solve this.”

“People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you’re lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.”

“Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.”

“Thinking is the hardest work in the world, which is probably why so few engage in it.”

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

“Don’t be a cog in someone else’s machine”

“The man who follows the crowd, will never be followed by a crowd.”

“There can be no real greatness without original thought.”

“What is is more important than what should be. Too many people are looking at what is from a position of thinking what should be.”

“A theory is no more like a fact than a photograph is like a person.”

“No one ever changed the world by doing what they were told.”

“Learn to see things as they really are, not as we imagine they are.”

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

“If you learn only methods, you’ll be tied to your methods, but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods.”

“Making the decision to not follow a system or someone else’s rules has allowed me to really dig into what my own strengths and gifts are without spending time feeling jaded or wasteful.”

“If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking.”

“When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead”

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

“It’s easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone.”

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

“Thinking is the hardest work in the world for those who have not formed the habit, but thinking can give pleasure and excitement.”

“I don’t want to be a passenger in my own life.”

“The strongest minds are often those of whom the noisy world hears least.”

“Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.”

“Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”

“A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinion of sheep.”

“You will never know what you are capable of unless you think for yourself.”

“Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.”

“Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.”

“It is always better to have no ideas than false ones.”

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”

“Do not block the way of inquiry.”

“Sapere aude. Dare to think.”

“Have the courage to use your own reason.”

“All truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, third it is accepted as self-evident.”

“Clarity precedes mastery.”

“Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, but to weigh and consider.”

“If you don’t control your mind, someone else will.”

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”

“Free thinkers 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.”

“Think for yourself and question everything.”

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.”

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

“Doubt is the origin of wisdom.”

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.”

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.”

“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after.”

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”

“Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

“We are powerfully imprisoned by the terms in which we have been conducted to think.”

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”

“Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.”

“Believers are in groups. Seekers are alone.”

“A wise man makes his own decisions; an ignorant man follows public opinion.”

“To think accurately you must separate facts from mere information, and then important facts from the unimportant.”

“I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.”

“People have become the tools of their tools.”

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”

“The ancestor of every action is thought.”

“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.”

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.”

“Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.”

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”

“It takes nothing to join the crowd. It takes everything to stand alone.”

“In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”

“No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.”

“The reality of life is that your perceptions - right or wrong - influence everything else you do…”

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

“A tourist follows a trail; a mountaineer finds one. A true mountaineer takes responsibility for him or herself and goes where no one else is going.”

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

“Read less. Think more.”

“Never be afraid to tread the path alone. Know which is your path and follow it wherever it may lead you; do not feel you have to follow in someone else’s footsteps.”

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

“If you broke a lot of rules as a kid, you’d probably make a great entrepreneur.”

“The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.”

“The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.”

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”