Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Quotes

The stories of past courage... can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.

Thinking for yourself - that's scarier than any devil image.

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one's own convictions - not obstinately or defiantly

For me, a writer should be more like a lighthouse keeper, just out there by himself. He shouldn't get his ideas from other people all around him.

What's the message in Metallica? There is no message, but if there was a message, it really should be look within yourself, don't listen to me, don't listen to James, don't listen to anybody, look within yourself for the answers.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

So it is necessary that we should learn to be alone.

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.

I'm raised to actually think, to use my brain.

The point of a philosophical spirit is to rely primarily upon one's own thinking.

I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

I think the moments that are difficult for anybody are when you see what your life could be, if only you had the courage to take the steps needed.

Think for yourself and question authority.

I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.

There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others

The world tells lots of people the light is red. You have to trust yourself and say, 'I think the light is green, and I'm going to keep doing this.'

I feel like artists, as much as we'd like to think we're communal, are pretty much loners.

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

Rely upon your own judgment; be true to your own conscience; follow the light that is within you; all outward lights are so many will-o'-the-wisps. There will be those who tell you that you are foolish; that your judgment is faulty; that your conscience is all awry, and that the light within you is darkness; but heed them not. If what they say is true, the sooner you, as a searcher of wisdom, find it out the better, and you can only make that discovery by bringing your powers to the test. Therefore, pursue your course bravely.

Self-reliance leads to intellectual independence. Each man must think for himself, must train the mind to think, must habituate the soul to observe and analyze.

No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.

It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.