Luc de Clapiers Quotes

He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess commitment to some special or constricting idea.

Finished persons are very common - people who are closed up, quite satisfied that there is little more to learn

An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.

If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.

Intellectually, most people never wash. They never free their minds of the accumulated rubbish of centuries.

The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.

No country or people who are slaves to dogma and the dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded

It's not my job to tell people what to think. If I can actually in some way help the readers' own creative thinking, then that's got to be to everybody's benefit.

Beware of the person of one book.

It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.

I feel like it's important every once in a while to estrange ourselves from the familiar to remind ourselves of the potentialities of people, how many different ways there are of being.

College is a refuge from hasty judgment.

Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking.

To be dogmatic about a cause you believe in at the age of 20 or 30 is not unusual. But to be dogmatic at age 55 or 60 shows a lack of any learning capacity.

In government, the forces of risk-aversion and constant conflict serve to stultify and narrow the range of ideas up for debate.

I'm open to comments. I'm open to objective points of view, because I've been very narrow and very subjective.

Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.

I always knew I was going somewhere - going out. I just knew. I just knew. I just knew there were a lot more points of view out there.

Travel at least erodes some of the narrowness that exists in each of us.

The more educated we are, the less we are prepared to tolerate views contrary to our own.

Any educated person recognizes that curiosity and creativity aren't just important; they are among the essential human activities.

My education has allowed me to be more open to ideas which I would not have been had I not been as educated.