Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Quotes

I don't think that I have ever been rebellious. The thing is that I don't believe in people - what people tell me. I have to accept it in my own brain first. I don't listen to anyone, never.

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.

I have always found myself trying to study and analyze the world around me - not just taking everything for granted and following whatever is popular.

Dare to think for yourself.

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.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

The point of a philosophical spirit is to rely primarily upon one's own thinking.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.

I don't substitute anybody else's judgment for my own.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

Think for yourself and question authority.

Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

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.

He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; and he that dares not reason is a slave.

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

The Enlightenment ideal, which all universities claim to endorse, is that everyone should think for themselves.

Whoever has once been truly unsettled by a work of the imagination will never give loyalty to a single idea, belief system, religious faith or party.

I don't believe anything unless I understand it inside out. And even if I understand something, it is not uncommon that I disagree with accepted view (even if it's a Nobel laureate).

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

I don't mean to say that I'm about to state my credo here on this page, but merely to affirm, sincerely for the first time in my life, my belief in man as an individual and independent entity. Certainly not independence in the everyday sense of the word, but pertaining to a freedom and mobility of thought that few people are able - or even have the courage - to achieve.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.

Every man can educate himself. It's shameful to put one's mind into the hands of those whom you wouldn't entrust with your money. Dare to think for yourself.

Don't pay attention to "authorities," think for yourself.

As soon as you can say what you think and not what some other person has thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man.