A. A. Milne Quotes

We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what "he" thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally - that is, for himself - which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts.

If you read all the time what other people have done, you will the think the way they thought.

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.

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

Never judge something by whether it is popular or not. You don't have to follow trends. No one thought William Wilberforce was right at first.

I wasn't overwhelmed by dogma, and that sort of freed me up to look at things differently.

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

The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.

Honestly, I feel you are poisoned if you read too much of the scientific literature because it makes you start thinking like other people. You're better off having a vague sense of what's going on and making your own way.

I'm against fashionable thinking.

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.

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.

In America, educators punish those who actually think for themselves. There is only acceptance for popular opinion.

I've always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it.

I'm instinctively cautious because I'm an academic.

I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.

When a man fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent.

I think some people like me because I'm different. I don't think like everybody else. People are so tied up in the worst parts of technology these days. They live a life pressing buttons. They don't use their imaginations.

We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it.

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.