#Independent Thought Quotes

“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.”

“Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions.”

“I'd rather argue against a hundred idiots, than have one agree with me.”

“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

“I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”

“It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.”

“It were not best that we should all think alike.”

“No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.”

“Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.”

“Say, Not so, and you will out circle the philosophers.”

“Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.”

“It"s good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you"ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you"ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you"ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.”