Bryce Courtenay Quotes

Trust your gut. You know yourself, so don't let somebody else tell you who you are.

The advice I would give to someone is to not take anyone's advice.

Everyone who means well gives advice based on his or her perception. I have realized that while it's important to hear the suggestions, one should only listen to oneself.

The kids are not brought up to have minds of their own as individuals.

The supreme lesson of any education should be to think for yourself and to be yourself; absent this attainment, education creates dangerous, stupefying conformity.

All I can tell you is that you cannot make choices in your own career, either career choices or choices when you're actually working as an actor, based on trying to downplay or live up to a comparison with somebody else. You just can't do that. You have to do your own work based on your own gut, your own instincts, and your own life.

I don't think that I have ever been rebellious. The thing is that I don't believe in people - what people tell me. I have to accept it in my own brain first. I don't listen to anyone, never.

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

I do what I feel I know how to do and don't do things that I don't. I'm a product of my sensibility.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

I listen with attention to the judgment of all men; but so far as I can remember, I have followed none but my own..

I know what's best for me, and I want to do things my way. So, now I listen to my inner voice and my heart - and that's how I make my decisions.

I never allowed other people's expectations to determine whatever course I took. I had to reach a decision about what I was going to do based on what I felt inside myself.

Never take advice, including this.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you're going east, and you will be walking east when you think you're going west.

And first and foremost, think straight, trust the quiet inner voice that tells you what to do. You hold your life in your hands, don't entrust it to anyone else, least of all to your chosen leaders. BE YOURSELF! Any number of great men have told you that.

Always listen to yourself. It is better to be wrong than to simply follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you will grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.

I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

It's very important not to do what your peers think you should do, not do what your parents think,your teachers or even your culture. Do what's inside of you.

Wake-up! Think for yourself, be yourself and return to what is real.

All the great masters in the world have been saying only one thing down the centuries, "Have your own mind and have your own individuality. Don't be a part of the crowd; don't be a wheel in the whole mechanism of a vast society. Be individual, on your own. Live life with your own eyes; listen to music with your own ears." But we are not doing anything with our own ears, with our own eyes, with our own minds; everything is being taught, and we are following it.

I hate the idea of always having to interpret other people's ideas and thoughts and words, because I'm very independent and, I guess, a free thinker.

You must not allow yourself to be advised, cautioned, influenced, persuaded

Determine to do some thinking for yourself. Don't live entirely upon the thoughts of others. Don't be an automaton.