Leo Tolstoy 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. 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.

People who are able to do their own thinking should not allow others to do it for them.

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.

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.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.

In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself.

I do hope that young men and women will start to think for themselves and start to take responsibility for their own thoughts.

In a world in which we are exposed to more information, more options, more philosophies, more perspectives than ever before, in which we must choose the values by which we will live (rather than unquestioningly follow some tradition for no better reason than that our own parents did), we need to be willing to stand on our own judgment and trust our own intelligence-to look at the world through our own eyes-to chart our course and think through how to achieve the future we want, to commit ourselves to continuous questioning and learning-to be, in a word, self-responsible.

I think people do have their own minds.

Don't pay attention to "authorities," think for yourself.

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

Question authority; think for yourself. Talk to people, do things unrelated to school - to come up with your own framework for living. The world is too complex and people are too different to be overly prescriptive about the details.

Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.

A contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling.

It's always a good idea to let the audience make up their own minds.

You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei

People thinking for themselves have more energy in their voice, than any government, which it is possible for human wisdom to invent; and every government not aware of this sacred truth will, at some period, be suddenly overturned.

A genius is simply one who has taken full possession of his own mind and directed it toward objectives of his own choosing, without permitting outside influences to discourage or mislead him.

I'm always like that about everything. When I try to do something, I always think, "What is the best way to do this?" Instead of taking what everyone else says and how it has been forever, it's faster for me to try myself. Of course I listen to what everybody says, and at first I'll try what people say, but I always come back to trying it my way.

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.

I don't give a damn what other people think. It's entirely their own business. I'm not writing for other people.

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

The person who thinks with [their] own brain is to be preferred to the one who blindly approves everything.... Better an error consciously committed and in good faith, than a good action performed in a servile manner.

The first move of leadership is learning to think for yourself.