Intellectual Sovereignty Quotes

Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience,he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.

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.

Wizard's Sixth Rule The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.

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.

Both poetry and philosophy are prodigal of eulogy over the mind which ransoms itself by its own energy from a captivity to custom, which breaks the common bounds of empire, and cuts a Simplon over mountains of difficulty for its own purposes, whether of good or of evil.

Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure

My mind... It's who I am. I think I'd rather suffer any other injury in the world than have my mind tampered with.

Knowledge is power but only wisdom is liberty.

The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary.

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.

If we are going to be masters of our destiny, we must be masters of the ideas that influence that destiny.

The mind is fast emancipating itself from the dominion of man and of matter. It has let loose fearful forces on the world.

Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous--secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will--we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books . . . we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.

Is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one's own brain, choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one' own personality?

In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.

We employ the mind to rule, the body to serve.