Cognitive Autonomy Quotes

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

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by godly men for surrendering our 'godly gift' of reason when we cross their mental thresholds?

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him.

The brain runs its show incognito.

By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.

Fundamental ideas are not a consequence of experience, but a result of the particular constitution and activity of the mind, which is independent of all experience in its origin, though constantly combined with experience in its exercise.

You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison; but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free!

Every human being has the ability to completely control his own mind.

I do not understand why people want to control their minds. I want them to liberate their minds.

People have own mind, own views.

People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.

No one thinks in your mind except you.

My mind's my kingdom.

No matter how close thought sticks to the actual, it follows its own rules.

We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.

But I confess that "my mind to me a kingdom is" - not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America.

Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.

I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.

Remember that all things are only opinion and that it is in your power to think as you please.

It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts; but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own minds.

The human head is bigger than the globe. It conceives itself as containing more. It can think and rethink itself and ourselves from any desired point outside the gravitational pull of the earth. It starts by writing one thing and later reads itself as something else. The human head is monstrous.

We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.