Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

I'm a father to four kids, so it bothers me that even though our children think big naturally, our society systematically trains them out of thinking that way.

A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.

Organization can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgment.

The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.

What did you learn in school that you still use today? Go ahead teachers, tell me. What? Fear, conformity, don't question authority.

My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

Life is not just eating, drinking, television and cinema...The human mind must be creative, must be self-generating ; it cannot depend on just gadgets to amuse itself.

My ideas and creativity are the sources of inspiration for me.

Nothing comes from nothing. You must continuously feed the inner beast that sparks and inspires.

Imagination is more robust in proportion as reasoning power is weak.

He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.

You've got to believe in yourself, or no one will believe in you. Imagination is like a bird on the wing, flying free for you to use.

As soon as we cease to pry about at random, we shall come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma; and as soon as we come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma, not only are the days of our liberty over, but we have lost the password that has hitherto opened to us the gates of success as well.

We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.

Sadly, children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only.

I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?

A student brings something to discuss, saying, "I don't know whether this is really good, or whether I should throw it in the wastebasket." The assumption is that one or the other choice is the right move. No. Almost everything we say or think or do - or write - comes in that spacious human area bounded by something this side of the sublime and something above the unforgivable.

The critical mind is the creative mind.

I also believe that everyone needs to think independently and make their own decisions on what makes the most sense.

We grow up thinking that the best answer is in someone else's brain. Much of our education is an elaborate game of 'guess what's in the teacher's head?' What the world really needs to know right now is what kind of dreams and ideas are in your head.

The ones with no imagination are always the quickest to justify themselves.

This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you’ll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you’ll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you’ll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.

Almost everyone today is brain-damaged by our education which is designed to produce docile automatons.