Samuel Johnson Quotes

When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote

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

Most people do not actually know how to think for themselves, and unfortunately that prevents them from even knowing it.

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

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power.

The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

When schools produce students who learned to think on the left or on the right, they're not thinking for themselves.

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

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.

Don't assume that because everyone believes a thing, that it is right or wrong. Reason things out for yourself. Work to get answers on your own. Understand why you believe things.

Notwithstanding this high Ecclesiastical authority, he who dared accept truth only because it could be proved, or proved to be good, and disregard authority, was commonly stigmatized as an infidel.

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

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

Guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own.

You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei

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.

Close reading of tough-minded writing is still the best, cheapest, and quickest method known for learning to think for yourself... Reading, and rigorous discussion of that reading in a way that obliges you to formulate a position and support it against objections, is an operational definition of education... reading, analysis, and discussion is the way we develop reliable judgment, the principle way we come to penetrate covert movements behind the facade of public appearances.

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

People don't care to read what they already think or what any people think - they know all that well enough. They want to know what they ought to think.

Thinking for yourself - that's scarier than any devil image.

I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself.

there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

When you give your children knowledge, you are telling them what to think. When you give your children wisdom, you do not tell them what to know, or what is true, but rather, how to get to their own truth.