Quotes on Independent Thinking

Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. When independent-thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the “Nation,” it’s time for all of us to sit up and worry.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

In economics, the majority is always wrong.

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Education in Chess has to be an education in independent thinking and judging. Chess must not be memorized.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

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