Self-Generated Ideas Quotes

We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.

No man can use his brain to think for another.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others

He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

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.

What a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of the other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.

There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.