Swami Vivekananda Quotes

You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.

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.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.

The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.

Wake-up! Think for yourself, be yourself and return to what is real.

...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.

The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time.

I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.

Be neither a conformist or a rebel, for they are really the same thing. Find your own path, and stay on it.

It's entirely possible to function as a free-thinking individual without succumbing to narcissism. This can be tricky at times, I suppose, but then so can the tango - particularly if you're dancing alone.

By not caring too much about what people think, I'm able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed with them because, again, I don't care too much what other people think.

Don't be anybody's follower, be a student.

Each one of us has something to contribute. This really depends on each one doing their own thinking, but not following any kind of rule.

Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds.

I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

The supreme lesson of any education should be to think for yourself and to be yourself; absent this attainment, education creates dangerous, stupefying conformity.

I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.

I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.

It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.