Charles Bukowski Quotes

Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?

It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.

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.

May God prevent us from becoming "right-thinking men"-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.

The sheep-people don't think for themselves anymore. You can say anything and it's the gospel truth and they don't have to go research it or anything, and they believe everything the news tells them. People don't go and do their own investigations if it's relationships or politics or anything.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

Where I come from you're not raised to think on your own. It's not that you're pushed to read the Bible. The Bible is read to you.

Here is a man with the greatest intellect in Europe, and yet he debases it by simply following majorities and the crowd.

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

When a man can take a poll and tell what everybody is thinking, that means nobody is really thinking anymore.

The enemy of individuality is groupthink.

Just because everybody else does something isn't a good enough reason to do anything.

Conformity is dangerous.

People tend not to want to question dogma. But I'm afraid of dogma.

Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.

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.

It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.

As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.

You can always get someone to do your thinking for you.

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.

Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?

Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.