Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

I say, let us think. Let each one express his thought. Let us become investigators, not followers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in Heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

It is always the task of the intellectual to "think otherwise." This is not just a perverse idiosyncrasy. It is an absolutely essential feature of a society.

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

Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought.

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

He who dares not reason, is a slave.

Think for yourself and question authority.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

An understandable prejudice of intellectual life leads us to view tilters at orthodoxy as courageous front-line innovators.

The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe

The essence of an individual’s freedom is the opportunity to deviate from traditional ways of thinking and of doing things.

I always grew up with, 'Question authority.'

Thought must never submit, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, save to the facts themselves, because, for thought, submission would mean ceasing to be.

My father, Benjamin Shiller, told me not to believe in authorities or celebrities - that society tends to imagine them as superhuman. It's good advice. People are snowed by celebrities all the time. In academia people have this idea of achieving stardom - publishing in the best journals, being at the best university, writing on the hot topic everyone else is writing about. But that's what my father told me not to do. He taught me that you have to pursue things that sound right to you.

I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. 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.

Intellectuals incline to be individualists, or even independents, are not team conscious and tend to regard obedience as a surrender of personality.

Let must or if be damned with whomever's afraid down with ought with because with every brain which thinks it thinks, nor dares to feel.

I’m worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they’re doing. I’m concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that’s handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.

Progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority.

I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.

The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it's enormously useful in life.

It requires philosophy and heroism to rise above the opinion of the wise men of all nations and races.

If you really wanna be a rebel, read your bible.

No one ever indoctrinated me.