Frank McCourt Quotes

Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society…

When a man can take a poll and tell what everybody is thinking, that means nobody is really thinking anymore.

Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.

Ignorance is servitude, because as a man thinks, so he is; a man who does not think for himself and allows himself to be guided by the thought of another is like the beast led by a halter.

Human beings never think for themselves. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

We owe it to our kids to inform them and train them how to think, not what to think.

When everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks.

Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.

The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you.

Make time less precious. We are way too efficient, making use of every hour, every minute. When you were a kid, didn’t you just spend hours poking sticks in the mud, climbing trees and sitting in them, looking at shells and seaweed that washed up on the shoreline? Time was not precious then, we weren’t trying to stuff an accomplishment into every minute every day, we had time for thoughts and feelings. That was good!

Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.

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

When was the last time you had a thought that wasn't put there by THEM?

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

When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.

A free man must not be told how to think, either by the government or by social activists. He may certainly be shown the right way, but he must not accept being forced into it.

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.

It would much conduce to the public benefit, if, instead of discouraging free-thinking, there was erected in the midst of this free country a dianoetic academy, or seminary for free-thinkers, provided with retired chambers, and galleries, and shady walks and groves, where, after seven years spent in silence and meditation, a man might commence a genuine free-thinker, and from that time forward, have license to think what he pleased, and a badge to distinguish him from counterfeits.

The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?

[On School Uniforms] Don't these schools do enough damage making all these kids think alike, now they have to make them look alike too? It's not a new idea, either. I first saw it in old newsreels from the 1930s, but it was hard to understand because the narration was in German.

My fans get enough politics on TV every day. I want them to think for themselves. I don't want them to listen to me.

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.

I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.