Ada Lovelace Quotes

Think your own thoughts.

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

But it's a poor fellow who can't take his pleasure without asking other people's permission.

We owe it to our kids to inform them and train them how to think, not what to think.

I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming . . . and a little mad.

History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to reflect upon it for themselves.

Be lamps unto yourselves. Be refuges unto yourselves. Take yourself no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead, Shall be a lamp unto themselves, Shall betake themselves as no external refuge, But holding fast to the truth as their lamp, Holding fast to the truth as their refuge, Shall not look for refuge to anyone else besides themselves, It is they who shall reach to the very topmost height; But they must be anxious to learn.

The Christian religion seems to have fulfilled its great biological purpose, in so far as we are able to judge. It has led human thought to independence, and has lost its significance, therefore, to a yet undetermined extent.... It seems to me that we might still make use in some way of its form of thought, and especially of its great wisdom of life, which for two thousand years has proven to be particularly efficacious.

It's about time that we as Arabs take things into our own hands and figure out our own future, rather than [keep depending] on some outside force to do it for us... particularly when intervention by this outside force has not particularly been beneficial to the region in recent history.

Some may study side by side, and yet be asunder when they come to the logic of things.

I am not a politician. I have often been approached in this regard, but I have always declined these sorts of offers. I view myself as an independent, critical intellectual, as someone who tries to stimulate thought on the left and the right, to encourage intellectual evolution.

The American people are not cowardly. But, living in prosperous isolation, they have been the spoiled children of modern history.

Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromising. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its members to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead…the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

Question everything generally thought to be obvious.

The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.

Unquestioning obedience is for slaves, the uneducated and the pathetic.

Persons grouped around a fire or candle for warmth or light are less able to pursue independent thoughts, or even tasks, than people supplied with electric light. In the same way, the social and educational patterns latent in automation are those of self-employment and artistic autonomy.

I've read too many books to believe what I am told.

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.

I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgments.

He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness.

No man must encroach upon my province, nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without pertinaciousness, but he must not expect to dictate to me. He may censure me freely and without reserve; but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his. I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others; but that exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service.

Lincoln is quoted more often than he's understood, and he understood that the founding principle of our nation is, in fact, the Declaration of Independence.

By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.