Luther Burbank Quotes

Neither believe nor reject any thing because any other person, or description of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven.

Guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing

Never accept an expert's opinion if it violates your own because the experts can change their minds.

Let us read the Bible without the ill-fitting colored spectacles of theology, just as we read other books, using our judgment and reason. . . .

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself.

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him.

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

If you're just a follower, you never know why you are doing something. Then you can't know if something is good or not. How would you know that what you thought is right, if you didn't think it?

Never take advice, including this.

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

Always listen to yourself... It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention.

I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naïveté?

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you're going east, and you will be walking east when you think you're going west.

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.

The purpose of education...is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.

I say on the air all time, "if you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot."

I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.

I don't believe anything unless I understand it inside out. And even if I understand something, it is not uncommon that I disagree with accepted view (even if it's a Nobel laureate).

Seek other people's advice, but don't take orders. And don't take 100% of anyone's advice. Make sure every decision you make is a product of your own conclusion. Be a student, not a disciple.

I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself.

there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

Play my own game. You can read all the books, but you have to listen to your intuition and not do everything exactly as they say. You have to do what feels right.

Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else's view or a mere book.