Quotes About Freethinking

There is a notion that creative people are absentminded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true. For they are in another world altogether.

Don't you know that most people take most things because that's what's given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgment?

My dad instilled in me to naturally question all authority. I don't follow anything blindly. That's religion, cops, doctors, schools, you name it.

My God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, of Beranger! My credo is the credo of Rousseau!

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.

Be a free thinker and don't accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in.

I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.

The American tradition of separation of church and state grew directly from the freethinking of the Founders. After political independence, they considered independence of thought and belief a logical next step.

I've always been indie.

Nobody is going to be as bad for free thinking, right-minded individuals than George Bush.

I don't know much, but nor do I have the intellectual straitjacket that a lot of people inevitably pick up at university.

I'm a voracious reader, and I like to explore all sorts of writing without prejudice and without paying any attention to labels, conventions or silly critical fads.

If I have smashed the traditions, it was because I knew no traditions.

Our forefathers found the evils of free thinking more to be endured than the evils of inquest or suppression. This is because thoughtful, bold and independent minds are essential to the wise and considered self-government.

My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

It is difficult to stop people from thinking on their own and exceedingly so, to get them to think on their own.

I'm absolutely not looking for someone who agrees with me about everything or someone who wants to please me by believing what I believe.

People ought to think for themselves... The problem is, people only think for themselves if you tell them to. (Corporal Carrot)

This country is about, in my judgment, aggressive, open debate. There is an old saying: When everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking very much.

I like Colin Wilson, mainly because he never went to school. When you don't go to school you can say anything you want like that and not have to worry.

Kids need to start thinking for themselves. Not to be like their friends that think they're individuals. I don't want you to be like us, I want you to be like you.

Što ?e ti sva geografija, trigonometrija i aritmetika svijeta ako ne nau?iš misliti svojom glavom? To te ne nau?e ni u jednoj školi. Nije u programu.

I do not think anyone can read the letters which passed between Clarke and [Anthony] Collins without admitting that Collins, who writes with wonderful Power and closeness of reasoning, has by far the best of the argument, so far as the possible materiality of the soul goes; and that in this battle the Goliath of Freethinking overcame the champion of what was considered orthodoxy.