Elbert Hubbard Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

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.

One can often hear from the young people:" I do not want to live according to others' mind. I can think of it myself. " Why should one think of something, when it is already thought about. Take it and go farther, this is the strength of the mankind.

Determine to do some thinking for yourself. Don't live entirely upon the thoughts of others. Don't be an automaton.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

Think for yourself and question authority.

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

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.

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

I think it's very desirable to be an individual and a free thinker.

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

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

I make up my opinions from facts and reasoning, and not to suit any body but myself. If people don't like my opinions, it makes little difference as I don't solicit their opinions or votes.

Don't assume that because everyone believes a thing, that it is right or wrong. Reason things out for yourself. Work to get answers on your own. Understand why you believe things.

I don't substitute anybody else's judgment for my own.

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

I'm someone who does not like a bunker mentality and does not like groupthink.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

All of my friends are independent in thought, that's important.