Ayn Rand Quotes

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.

Thinking no longer means anymore than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

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.

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.

The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.

Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking.

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.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself.

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

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.

Riposte of "that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by her nieces of being illogical," Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?

No book is of much importance; the vital thing is, What do you yourself think?

No one knows more about the way you think than you do.

Strictly speaking, you don't think: Thinking happens to you.

Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind.

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

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.

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being-free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies-and therefore you can find out what religion is.

I was pretty far gone, but not so far gone that I thought anyone with half a toehold in reality would think what we were doing was a good idea.

Now you are beginning to think for yourself instead of letting others think for you. That’s the beginning of wisdom.

Hear Everything and judge for yourself