Top 92 Quotes About Independent Thought
#1. TV's sameness has destroyed many things, such as the American urge toward independent thought.
Bennett Cerf
#2. Silence is hereby outlawed. Silence breeds independent thought, which in turn breeds dissent.
Frank Beddor
#3. The right to criticize: the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood ... Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own.
Margaret Chase Smith
#4. Here in the enclave, one didn't prosper by demonstrating too much independent thought.
Ann Aguirre
#5. A Sannyasin cannot belong to any religion, for his is a life of independent thought, which draws from all religions; his is a life of realisation, not merely of theory or belief, much less of dogma.
Swami Vivekananda
#6. At the end of the day," he continued, "although many believe in fate, it's those who go through life with independent thought alone who are the strongest.
Adele Rose
#7. Paste Magazine really embodies all that's left of a true independent thought and expression in music journalism in the states right now. Please support the cause and lift them up to keep them moving forward.
Shawn Mullins
#8. They were drones, men costumed in independent thought who'd become slaves of party groupspeak. (p. 4)
Jonathan Lethem
#9. Your heart's Brain has independent thought which can create a life of tranquil bliss.
Steven Redhead
#10. The time has come for people of reason to say: Enough is Enough! Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous.
Richard Dawkins
#11. Often girls feel deeply cared about as small children but then find as we develop willpower and independent thought that the world stops affirming us, that we are seen as unlovable.
Bell Hooks
#12. Independent film is film that has thought in it. There's no independent thought in studio films. It's collective thought.
Seymour Cassel
#13. Independent thought is hard and liberating, thoughtless acceptance is easy and enslaving.
Ronin
#14. Was. He wasn't so much jealous as he wanted Kimiko to confess that she experienced lust independent of him - the thought of her sovereign lechery turned him on, because it frightened him.
Aleksandar Hemon
#15. Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.
Sue Grafton
#16. I'll not listen to reason ... reason always means what someone else has got to say.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#17. My mother didn't want me to be in fashion. She was in the fashion business, so was my brother, and she thought it was too crazy for me. She wanted me to be married with children, to be independent, yes, but not to have a crazy life.
Donatella Versace
#18. 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
#19. Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.
Andre Breton
#20. Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my having ever written anything, or being able to imagine ever writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.
Elif Batuman
#21. A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young.
John Dewey
#22. People say, "What's it like to be a minority of one, or a kick-bag for the Internet?" It washes off me like jizz off a porn star's face.
Christopher Hitchens
#23. 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
#24. It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.
Neil Postman
#25. Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral?
John Stuart Mill
#26. I've always - honestly - never thought of myself as an independent director.
Harmony Korine
#27. I have always thought that Israel, as an independent and sovereign nation, had a right to defend itself.
Don Nickles
#28. The only people we want to blame are ourselves, because it will be ourselves that we rely upon.
Markus Zusak
#29. The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
Christopher Hitchens
#30. I have sometimes thought
that under the affectation of independent views you are as enslaved to the social code as any woman I know!
Thomas Hardy
#31. Anxiety, and the physical symptoms it causes, is merely fog along the path of independence and discovery.
Charles F. Glassman
#32. Do you call yourself Free? It is your ruling thought that I would hear, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#33. It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
James Baldwin
#34. I've known Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and they're two of the most independent people I've ever known in my life, and the thought we could somehow bend their views I find really beyond my capacity to believe.
Peter George Peterson
#35. In speaking of arithmetic (algebra, analysis) as a part of logic I mean to imply that I consider the number-concept entirely independent of the notions or intuitions of space and time, that I consider it an immediate result from the laws of thought.
David Foster Wallace
#37. The thought of being completely dependent disturbs people till the moment their eyes are opened to reality.
Auliq Ice
#38. People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
Emma Goldman
#39. Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.
Voltaire
#40. How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?
Albert Einstein
#41. I have never thought of writing as a profession. It is a solitary independent activity in which practice can never bestow seniority.
John Berger
#42. I shall have my lasso, I shall lead the course;
I recognize it's time to mount a different horse.
Mie Hansson
#43. Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
#44. I was so grateful to be independent of the academic establishment. I thought, how awful it would be to have my future hinge on such people and such decisions.
Jane Jacobs
#45. Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.
Emma Goldman
#46. She thought she was independent and strong, but she got one small taste of love and she was hungrier than anyone. She was ravenous.
Ann Brashares
#47. I'm an independent, straight in the middle. I've donated to candidates that I thought would be good that are Republican and Democrats alike.
John Paul DeJoria
#48. 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
#49. Leave home? It's quite a scary thought. I'm not the most independent person and that's the result. When you're always surrounded by people it becomes quite normal.
Rupert Grint
#50. In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
Galileo Galilei
#51. People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn't stop you from having your own opinion.
Anne Frank
#52. Surely love has nothing to do with the mind, it is not the product of the mind; love is entirely independent of calculation, of thought.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#53. Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.
Edward Abbey
#54. The priceless heritage of the free and independent interchange of thought is not to be kept without ceaseless vigilance. Only by guarding the truth itself can we guard the greatest of all our liberties-the right to proclaim the truth. On that liberty rests the destiny of millions.
Julius Elias, 1st Viscount Southwood
#55. [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
#56. You have no idea how many men are spoiled by what is called education. For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. If Shakespeare had graduated at Oxford, he might have been a quibbling attorney, or a hypocritical parson.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#58. A totalitarian regime thus has one political party, one educational system, one artistic creed, one centrally planned economy, one unified media, and one moral code. In a totalitarian state there are no independent schools, no private businesses, no grassroots organizations, and no critical thought.
Anne Applebaum
#59. The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.
Emma Goldman
#60. Not on the outer world For inward joy depend; Enjoy the luxury of thought, Make thine own self friend; Not with the restless throng, In search of solace roam But with an independent zeal Be intimate at home.
Lydia Sigourney
#62. A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.
Banksy
#63. I don't think the Cure liked us. I think they resented us in some way, because we'd managed to stay cool, credible, and independent and they'd, well, sort of sold out a bit. The problem was on their side; it wasn't on our side. But I think they thought, Wish we were Joy Division.
Peter Hook
#64. 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
#65. I think maybe my mom thought that Katharine Hepburn would be a good role model of, like, a strong, smart, independent woman. Maybe she steered me in that direction. You know, because she was really so ahead of her time.
Gillian Jacobs
#66. The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.
Emma Goldman
#67. There was a time when men thought it was sexy to have a housewife waiting for him to come home from work in her slippers, but in modern society, I think an independent woman is even more sexy.
Kat Graham
#68. Now whenever things are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and submit to persecution and the will of the Lord.
H.G.Wells
#70. No, I just thought of a story and wrote down what I saw. It was about two kids in Ireland who went around killing people. It was called Travelers, and it was made as an independent film.
Neil Jordan
#71. I just thought, given the practicalities of financing an independent movie, you have to have some names. That's just the way it works. You have to have a name that can get you foreign pre-sales.
George Ratliff
#72. He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world's store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library.
Milan Kundera
#73. I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or religion, or any other matter that is projected into the field of our notice and interest, is a most rare thing -- if it has indeed ever existed.
Mark Twain
#74. 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
#75. It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
Benjamin Franklin
#76. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of ... but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.
Thomas Jefferson
#77. Apart from thought, there is no independent entity called "world." Just as the spider emits the thread (of the web) out of itself and then withdraws it, likewise, the mind projects the world out of itself and then withdraws it back into itself.
Ramana Maharshi
#78. I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy.
Haruki Murakami
#79. All of my friends are independent in thought, that's important.
Aeriel Miranda
#80. Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system.
Miguel Ruiz
#81. You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison; but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free!
Kahlil Gibran
#82. It is always easier to take the words of a Jesus, a Gandhi, a Marx, or a Confucius as constituting Holy Writ. This involves less reading, less study, less thought, less conflict, and less independent searching, but it also means less growth toward maturity.
William Coperthwaite
#83. Meteorologist see perfect in strange things, and the meshing of three completely independent weather systems to form a hundred-year event is one of them. My God, thought Case, this is the perfect storm.
Sebastian Junger
#84. I am not a politician. I have often been approached in this regard, but I have always declined these sorts of offers. I view myself as an independent, critical intellectual, as someone who tries to stimulate thought on the left and the right, to encourage intellectual evolution.
Tariq Ramadan
#85. Culture is a virus. It distorts your view of the world and destroys your capacity to think independently.
Merlyn Gabriel Miller
#86. Higher level independence starts with the freedom and independence of the mind to think and act according to the highest principles of knowledge and worthy traditions of a nation.
Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud
#87. I always thought of indie-rock as being rock music by bands that were on independent labels, and that's a great thing.
Britt Daniel
#88. There are lots of great movies coming out of the U.S. but it's not something I've ever really been interested in. They're great films but I much prefer the smaller independent films, which are more thought provoking and experimental.
Billie Piper
#89. I can tell from the tone of his voice and the thought processes in getting to where he's at that there's no point in talking to him further. He wanted to make that decision independent of all other factors and we respect that. [on Damien Martyn retiring
Ian Chappell
#90. I always thought I was thought and independent, that I could do everything alone. Turns out I'm not as tough as I'd like to think I am.
Jaci Burton
#92. Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.
Banksy
