George Carlin Quotes

My mom would say I'm a good kid… but I put them through a lot. I was rejecting religion and, not permanently, also kind of rejecting the things that they'd taught me, and just trying to think for myself.

Don't let them fool ya, or even try to school ya! Oh, no! We've got a mind of our own, so go to hell if what you're thinking is not right!

I had always been a reader and a skeptic, so when I was old enough to break away from organized religion, it just came naturally.

I went to a Catholic school. The private school was good - the teachers wanted all of us to have the freedom to think for ourselves. The education was good at the Catholic school, but you only got that one ideology.

Question authority; think for yourself. Talk to people, do things unrelated to school - to come up with your own framework for living. The world is too complex and people are too different to be overly prescriptive about the details.

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

In high school, I came to realize I had a second-hand faith, derived from my parents and family background. I had no actual reasons for believing it.

I credit that eight years of grammar school with nourishing me in a direction where I could trust myself and trust my instincts. They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, "This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it's not for me."

I don't mean to say that I'm about to state my credo here on this page, but merely to affirm, sincerely for the first time in my life, my belief in man as an individual and independent entity. Certainly not independence in the everyday sense of the word, but pertaining to a freedom and mobility of thought that few people are able - or even have the courage - to achieve.

In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself.

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

I don't believe in holy writ. Buy fifty books or twenty-five books, take three weeks off, read them and make up your own theory. The fact that you end up literally burning twenty-two out of twenty-five books is beside the point.

I don't ever want to be the type of person to tell you what to think or what to believe. Whatever stage in your life that you are in, I want you to organically reach whatever conclusions that you possibly reach.

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.

My whole life is a contradiction on purpose - to make you think. I think people have forgetten how to have their own opinions. They're always waiting for someone to tell them what to do and what to wear - it's so boring.

Children are taught to fear and obey; the avarice, pride, or timidity of parents teaches children economy, arrogance, or submission. They are also encouraged to be imitators, a course to which they are already only too much inclined. No one thinks of making them original, courageous, independent.

Learn to do your own thinking - don’t let other people do it for you!

I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgments.

Think for yourself. Know what you're doing. Question authority.

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power.

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

Sometimes people think you’re smart if you question the status quo, if nothing else.

College is such a unique time because you're learning a little bit how to be an adult. You're learning how to take care of yourself without parental influence, and you're exposed to so many great minds. I feel like I didn't even know how to think until I got to college.

Get the advice of everybody whose advice is worth having - they are very few - and then do what you think best yourself.