William Drummond Quotes

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding.

Never prevent men from forming judgments according to their intellect

The Enlightenment ideal, which all universities claim to endorse, is that everyone should think for themselves.

I've always been very liberal when it comes to people thinking for themselves.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him.

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; and he that dares not reason is a slave.

Reason is the tool men use to determine if their statements about reality are valid: there is no other. Those who do not or cannot reason are little better than slaves because their lives are controlled by the ideas of other men, ideas they have not examined.

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

Think your own thoughts.

Advice to intellectuals: let no-one represent you.

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.

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

If you want to be told what to think, well, I'm not in that business.

You must avoid letting anyone usurp your freedom of thought in any way, whether on religious or other grounds. People must use their minds and think and there are situations where the use of the intellect is necessary so that excessive fantasy or fancy can be held in check.

Liberty, as a counterweight to servile docility which receives everything without scrutiny ... will without question be the theme of this university.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

No man's mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be compelled to do so.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

My goal is never to push anyone to do anything other than think.

When schools produce students who learned to think on the left or on the right, they're not thinking for themselves.

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.