Quotes & Sayings About Free Thinking

Children must be free to think in all directions irrespective of the peculiar ideas of parents who often seal their children's minds with preconceived prejudices and false concepts of past generations. Unless we are very careful, very careful indeed, and very conscientious, there is still great danger that our children may turn out to be the same kind of people we are. — Brock Chisholm

The military-strategic dimensions of world order were, in American thinking, inseparable from the economic dimensions. US planners viewed the establishment of a freer and more open international economic system as equally indispensable to the new order they were determined to construct from the ashes of history's most horrific conflict. Experience had instructed them, Secretary of State Cordell Hull recalled, that free trade stood as an essential prerequisite for peace. The autarky, closed trading blocs, and nationalistic barriers to foreign investment and currency convertibility that had characterized the depression decade just encouraged interstate rivalry and conflict. A — Robert J. McMahon

We the humans are too tiny to know something so grand as an Eternal Driving Force behind the Universe. Ultimately what would really matter in the development of our species as a whole is, we the humans serving humanity. — Abhijit Naskar

Said: "We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we're so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don't give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won't be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth - nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow." They aren't. They weren't. They never were. — Elizabeth Gilbert

...his condition in Roanoke is a strong testament that lassitude, indifference and the peculiarities of his thought were primarily the consequences of his illness and not of the early attempts to treat it.

The popular view that anti-psychotics were chemical straight jackets that suppressed clear thinking and voluntary activity seems not to be borne out in Nash's case.

If anything, the only periods when he was relatively free of hallucinations, delusions and the erosion of will were the periods following either insulin treatment or the use of anti psychotics.

In other words, rather than reducing Nash to a zombie, medication seemed to reduce zombie like behavior. — Sylvia Nasar

The hand that once wielded both sword and axe now aches after an evening of the quill. When I wipe the tip of one clean, I often wonder how many buckets of ink I have used in a lifetime. How many words have I set down on paper or vellum, thinking to trap the truth thereby? And of those words, how many have I myself consigned to the flames as worthless and wrong? I do as I have done so many times. I write, I sand the wet ink, I consider my own words. Then I burn them. Perhaps when I do so, the truth goes up the chimney as smoke. Is it destroyed, or set free in the world? I do not know. I — Robin Hobb

Grace quite likes the fact that you can think something is one way all your life, and it turns out you're wrong, it can be something else entirely. It makes her feel free. Nothing is rigid. Things change. You can change your mind. You can change your thinking. Grace — Liane Moriarty

Look at Thomas Jefferson. The guy had illegitimate kids in the 1700s, and they caught him last year. If you cheat on your wife and cover it up for 200 years, you're pretty much thinking you're home free. — Greg Giraldo

You can never be free from limitation until you are willing to recognize that you and you alone are responsible for what you are. After you have passed infancy you are not a victim of anything but your own thinking. — Margery Wilson

For perhaps the first time in public, he used the neutral 'Africans' instead of the pejorative 'Kaffirs'. The change in language reflected a deeper change in his way of thinking about the world. When he first came to South Africa, Gandhi had pleaded for Indians to be distinguished from Africans, whom he then considered 'uncivilized'. Now, fifteen years later, he brought all races within a single ambit. They all had similar hopes, and would one day have the same rights. In the future, Indians and Africans would be absolutely free men, mingling with Boers and Britons in a nation where one's citizenship did not depend on the colour of one's skin. — Ramachandra Guha

Try to live with whatever you can afford and avoid putting yourself in an awkward position of thinking how you can afford what you have failed to afford, please free your life on earth. — Auliq Ice

We should not care much whether those thus united (against slavery) were designated 'Whig,' 'Free Democrat' or something else; though we think some simple name like 'Republican' would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery. — Horace Greeley

We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. We don't feel that in 1964, living in a country that is supposedly based upon freedom, and supposedly the leader of the free world, we don't think that we should have to sit around and wait for some segregationist congressmen and senators and a President from Texas in Washington, D.C., to make up their minds that our people are due now some degree of civil rights. No, we want it now or we don't think anybody should have it. — Malcolm X

The power behind taking responsibility for your actions lies in putting an end to negative thought patterns. You no longer dwell on what went wrong or focus on whom you are going to blame. You don't waste time building roadblocks to your success. Instead, you are set free and can now focus on succeeding. — Lorii Myers

Trusting your gut is always the best thing - no matter what people around you insist you should be doing or saying or thinking. Only you know and once you live in truth,your heart is completely free. — Liberty Ross

Before I could process the question, from the back side was a soft 'snick" as the cross was adjusted to my height and the ankle clamps latched down. My hands were free, but I wasn't going anywhere. My gasp must have been audible as this was not part of my design, but I was thinking I needed to have mine re-fitted. — Abyrne Mostyn

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There — G.K. Chesterton

It is part of our pedagogy to teach the operations of thinking, feeling, and willing so that they may be made conscious. For if we do not know the difference between an emotion and a thought, we will know very little ... We need to understand the components (of emotions) at work ... in order to free their hold. — Mary Caroline Richards

At some point, all comics have to go out and be retail salesmen doing door-to-door. And this idea of somebody who totally knows their craft having to get up for free in front of a crowd to work out some stuff they're thinking in their head, still, after as much success as you can get, is really interesting. — Ira Glass

There is something inherently stupid about gentrified thinking. It's a dumbing down and smoothing over of what people are actually like. It's a social position rooted in received wisdom, with aesthetics blindly selected from the presorted offerings of marketing and without information or awareness about the structures that create its own delusional sense of infallibility. Gentrified thinking is like the bourgeois version of Christian fundamentalism, a huge, unconscious conspiracy of homogenous patterns with no awareness about its own freakishness. The gentrification mentality is rooted in the belief that obedience to consumer identity over recognition of lived experience is actually normal, neutral, and value free. — Sarah Schulman

You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late. — Jhumpa Lahiri

We do everything by custom, even believe by it; our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned. — Thomas Carlyle

Find a space where you can be creative and a place where you are open for free thinking, you want to enjoy what you are doing and do what you are best at. — David Karp

Freedom is for the curious ones. Free is the one not influenced by taboos. Free is the one who reasons and evolves continuously, and refuses to accept anything without thinking. — Massimo Marino

That foundation rested on our critique of what we then called 'the enemy within,' referring to our internalized sexism. We all knew firsthand that we had been socialized as females by patriarchal thinking to see ourselves as inferior to men, to see ourselves as always and only in competition with one another for patriarchal approval, to look upon each other with jealousy, fear, and hatred. Sexist thinking made us judge each other without compassion and punish one another harshly. Feminist thinking helped us unlearn female self-hatred. It enabled us to break free of the hold patriarchal thinking had on our consciousness. — Bell Hooks

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being-free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies-and therefore you can find out what religion is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

But now I want to say things that comfort me and that are a little free. For example: Thursdat is a day transparent as an insect's wing in the light. Just as Monday is a compact day. Ultimately, far beyond thought, I live from these ideas, if ideas is what they are. They are sensations that transform into ideas because I must use words. Even just using them mentally. The primary thought thinks with words. — Clarice Lispector

We need a revolution in development thinking and practice. Foreign aid, debt relief, family planning, democracy, education, and free markets have not succeeded. — William Easterly

All of his (Nanak's) progressive thinking attained absolution at the age of 30, when he had the transcendental experience, quite similar to that of Mohammed and Joan of Arc, that was about to rock the very foundation of orthodox Hinduism in India. — Abhijit Naskar

Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I find it quite useful to think of a free-market economy - or partly free market economy - as sort of the equivalent of an ecosystem. Just as animals flourish in niches, people who specialize in some narrow niche can do very well. — Charlie Munger

The far we can see, we are! It is time we lifted our eyes beyond the horizon of our present boundaries and see goodies ahead of us. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death. — John Green

The impulse to make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free is an old one ... When we are badly frightened, we think we can make ourselves safer by sacrificing some of our liberties. We did it during the McCarthy era out of fear of communism. Less liberty is regularly proposed as a solution to crime, to pornography, to illegal immigration, to abortion, to all kinds of threats. — Molly Ivins

We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called. — Richard M. Nixon

I'm starting to understand that attempting to be perfect has been the goal of my life. Our lives. Attempting to be this fault-free, smiling person in this loving, happy family that fits so perfectly in this pretty, inoffensive little town. What was so bad about that goal after all? Only that I couldn't do it. That I let everybody down. I've been so down about it, so depressed thinking about all the balls I was trying to juggle that I've dropped, and now the cogs are turning toward total apathy toward it all, everything and all I can think about is that I am a shell of a human being. I'm a pushover. I'm to blame. — Abigail Tarttelin

It's really hard to make records and concentrate and have a free mind, because I have this whole other life. If you don't have kids it's a whole other thing. I think you can be fifty and still have a rock and roll lifestyle; you can still perpetuate that. — Pat Benatar

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest! — Friedrich Nietzsche

I think always my interest in making movies is to have something really technical mixed with something that was not so formal ... something free. — Michel Gondry

The universe, it appeared, had never been kind to Captain Bortrek, conspiring against him in a fashion that Threepio privately considered unlikely given the man's relative unimportance. Knowing what he did about the Alderaan social structure, shipping regulations, the psychology of law enforcement agents, and the statistical behavior patterns of human females, Threepio was much inclined to doubt that so many hundreds of people would spend that much time thinking up ways to thwart and injure a small-time free-trader who was, by his own assertion, only trying to make a living. — Barbara Hambly

Flout 'em, and scout 'em; and scout 'em, and flout 'em; / Thought is free. — William Shakespeare

I think everybody comes to the table with a different point of view and a different need ... A lot of Beverly Lewis' material revolves around secrets and bringing those secrets to light. So, you know, there's always that theme, that ... we're as sick as our secrets and once they're revealed we can be set free from them. So, that's definitely a theme that resonates. — Michael Landon Jr.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace. — Richard Brautigan

I just want to be remembered as someone who wanted people to think free and wanted people to be free, whether it's at the end of the day, or at the end of the mortal coil. — Immortal Technique

Think What You Do When You Run in Debt: You Give to Another Power over Your Liberty — Benjamin Franklin

Each and every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures. — Yuval Noah Harari

What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself. — Milton Friedman

Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and propagate, age and fade unfulfilled and uncertain what it has all been for. We swallow the operating system with our mother's milk and sleepwalk into the forest of consumer illusion craving shoes, houses, cars, magazines, experiences that endorse our preconceived dreams and opinions. We grow into our parents. We becomes clones, robots, matchstick men thinking and saying the same, feeling the same, behaving the same, appreciating in books and films and art shows those things we already recognize and understand. — Chloe Thurlow

Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading through up to your eyes in blood, you could only end up where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found ... all is confusion beyond it. — Edmund Burke

Psychics, astrology, tarot cards - all these mystical non-sense are signs of a weak mind. Whenever such garbage starts grabbing hold of you, seek the help of a physician or therapist. — Abhijit Naskar

When the psychiatrist approves of a person's actions, he judges that person to have acted with "free choice"; when he disapproves,he judges him to have acted without "free choice." It is small wonder that people find "free choice" a confusing idea: "free choice" appears to refer to what the person being judged (often called the "patient") does, whereas it is actually what the person making the judgment (often a psychiatrist or other mental health worker) thinks. — Thomas Szasz

I actually think that craft service was the reason I got into acting: the free food. I literally remember on my first job being like, "Yes! I get to have craft service every day!" — Blake Lively

Who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation will be so before the eye of all the world. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

I come from the liberal side of thinking: Better one guilty man should walk free than one innocent man found guilty. — Ian McShane

I'm cancer-free today!
Cancer cannot keep up with my goals, enthusiasm, focus, passion, and determination. I will run you out of my body by not thinking about you, I will focus on what it will be like when you are gone. — Gregory Q. Cheek

The mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used. — Mortimer J. Adler

Every smallest step in the field of free thinking, and of the personally formed life, has ever been fought for at the cost of spiritual and physical tortures ... change has required its innumerable martyrs ... Nothing has been bought more dearly than that little bit of human reason and sense of freedom that is now the basis of our pride. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. — Nikola Tesla

I think the chemistry on the Orange set is extraordinary and I'm going to risk and say this: I think by virtue of the fact that there are not so many men, we are free to be absolutely authentic. There is a lot of freedom and trust. — Kate Mulgrew

I think we have a free will, and at the same moment we don't. We have to live with that. It doesn't make sense intellectually, but that's because our intellect is always trying to come up with a logical, rational explanation for things. To do that, it puts labels on things. But once you label something, you've got twoness. You've got the label, and you've got what you're labeling. And there is only oneness in the universe, even though we artificially believe in twoness. — Wayne Dyer

Perversion is used only to overcome moral prejudices or conformity; the mind and desire must become amoral, focused and made entirely acceptive so that the life-force is free of inhibitions prior to the control. Thus, the Sabbath becomes a deliberate sex-orgy for the purpose of materialization: the Great Reality of 'as if (wishful thinking). Sex is fully exploited: he who injures none, himself does not injure. — Anonymous

And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. — Mother Teresa

My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. Reform is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions. — John Ray

Just thinking about how long it's been since I've managed to wind up covered in blood," I said. "It's like a new trend. A blood-free trend. — Seanan McGuire

I remember thinking that walking on the beach as a free man is pretty desirable. — Pierre Trudeau

Listen to your beliefs, think about how you learned them, and realize that they are not genetic, nor are they the "only way." You are free to acquire new perspectives, to absorb new ideas, and to question everything you were taught to believe. As your mind opens to exploration and change, you'll feel a new lightness and more joy. — Charlotte Sophia Kasl

The problem with the evangelical homeschool movement was not their desire to educate their children at home, or in private religious schools, but the evangelical impulse to "protect" children from ideas that might lead them to "question" and to keep them cloistered in what amounted to a series of one-family gated communities. — Frank Schaeffer

A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" In the same way, we never thought to ask, "How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc? — Doris Lessing

So I got to thinking that perhaps that's what money is: a crystallization - or, rather, a homogenization - of time and free will into those things we call dollars and pounds and yen and euros. Money multiplies your time. It also expands your agency and broadens the number of things you can do accordingly. Big-time lottery winners haven't won ten million dollars - they've won ten thousand person-years of time to do pretty much anything they want anywhere on Earth. Windfalls are like the crystal meth version of time and free will. — Douglas Coupland

In a free society, skeptics are the watchdogs against irrationalism - the consumer advocates of ideas. Debunking is not simply the divestment of bunk; its utility is in offering a better alternative, along with a lesson on how thinking goes wrong. — Michael Shermer

Fundamental security comes from realizing that you have broken through something. You reflect back and realize that you used to be extraordinarily paranoid and neurotic, watching each step you made, thinking you might lose your sanity, that situations were always threatening in some way. Now you are free of all those fears and preconceptions. You discover that you have something to give rather than having to demand from others, having to grasp all the time. For the first time, you are a rich person, you contain basic sanity. You have something to offer, you are able to work with your fellow sentient beings, you do not have to reassure yourself anymore. Reassurance implies a mentality of poverty--you are checking yourself, "Do I have it? How could I do it?" But the bodhisattva's delight in his richness is based upon experience rather than theory or wishful thinking. It is so, directly, fundamentally. He is fundamentally rich and so can delight in generosity. — Chogyam Trungpa

He sprayed on a bit of this man's body-spray thing his mom had gotten for free at Walmart, feeling like a douche, but thinking it was better to feel like a douche than to smell like an asshole. — Lauren Oliver

If instituted, the TPP's IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you're ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs. — Julian Assange

People in free societies don't have to fear the pathology of the state. We create our own frenzy, our own mass convulsions, driven by thinking machines that we have no final authority over. The frenzy is barely noticeable most of the time. It's simply how we live. — Don DeLillo

Music has the potential and the capability to create something much bigger ... it has the capability to be completely free, to do anything. And I think you limit that idea when you put yourself in front of it, in a way. — Karin Dreijer Andersson

The shift in my thinking began when I realized that truth sets us free and that Jesus is the truth. In — Neil T. Anderson

My view is that the time has come for the international community to act on Zimbabwe in the way that it did in Bosnia - I do not think that we are going to get free and fair elections in Zimbabwe — Raila Odinga

I think we are in fact, losing free speech. We don't seem to care though. Many of us don't seem to notice. We will have to do a lot of work to bring back the American way to America. — Henry Rollins

She danced with complete abandon. She never felt so light and free. She could stretch her arms forever, touch the heavens and pull down the stars. She would give him the stars to keep in his pocket, she thought. They would bring him good luck. She jumped and laughed and drew giggles from some of the other girls. She felt high, though she never before experienced a drug high. But then what was she thinking? He was her drug, and she felt high on the dark, rich honey. Honey that matched the color of his eyes. She could drink him to overflowing and never be satisfied. She was filled with the honey even now; it coursed through her limbs - a powerful, exotic, demanding potion that ordered her to dance. And so she did. She danced. — S. Walden

Yes, take a little time to play And look at life the other way. God rested when the world was made: Rest now, old friend; be not afraid. But think not that your work is over, That you are now a foot-free rover, A rambler upon idle ways, Whittling away the golden days. For in the road climb to the goal There's no long furlough for a soul. There's no long pause: on every height Another summit swims in sight. The long road rises, scene by scene, With little restings in between. — Edwin Markham

In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to get things done as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers. — David Brin

Do not wait for enough time or money to accomplish what you think you have in mind. Work with what you have right now. Work with the people around you right now ... . Do not wait for what you assume is the appropriate, stress-free environment in which to generate expression ... . Do not wait till you are sure that you know what you are doing ... . What you do now, what you make of your present circumstances, will determine the quality and scope of your future endeavors. — Anne Bogart

Thanks to Barack Obama, America is for the first time aligning its values with those of 'the majority of the world's population.' If you think the world's population has had better values than America, that is has made societies that are more open, free, and tolerant than American society, and that is has fought for others' liberty more than America has, you should be delighted. — Dennis Prager

Being a woman in the pop world, sexuality is half poison and half liberation. What's the line? I don't have a line. I am the most sexually free woman on the planet, and I genuinely am empowered from a very honest place by my sexuality. What's more primal than sex? I mean, it's so honest. If I didn't think I had the talent to back that up, I wouldn't have done it. — Lady Gaga

I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself? — Wendell Berry

Here's what the kids get. They get free McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken for a year, and 52 six-packs of Pepsi. And I'm thinking, well, actually, it might be healthier if they were taking steroids. — David Letterman

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free Country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional spheres; avoiding in the exercise of the Powers of one department to encroach upon another. — George Washington

I would rather be a free animal then a cage animal — Beto Jimenez

Science and its practice are no longer free and willing today but instead are constantly terrorized by research funding gravy trains and group thinking. This is why science needs defending and it takes courage to cleanse science from those cancerous elements and to bring her forward in its rightful place again. I am humbled and honored by this recognition. — Willie Soon

I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking. — Anthony De Mello

Working in the context of ultra-famous brands like Dior and Vuitton, creative spirits are always going to feel reined in. It's important that they are free to develop ideas. And rather than detracting from the principal job, it reinforces it. I think of that money as venture capital. It's not a big investment. — Bernard Arnault

Thinking that the next person, the next relationship, the next experience will free you - these are foolish thoughts of people who are bound again and again to birth, death and rebrith for thousands and thousands of incarnations. — Frederick Lenz

Under presupposition of free will each human action would be an inexplicable miracle - an effect without cause. And if one dares the attempt to make such a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae imaginable to oneself, one will soon become aware that here the understanding quite genuinely comes to a standstill: it has no form for thinking of such a thing. — Arthur Schopenhauer

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant. — Mark Twain

I exercised my mental muscles in the library, and lo and behold, I transformed myself from a casual reader into a focused one. So it was more than just free books, but also free space and a culture that reinforced settling down, deep reading, thinking, imagining, and exploring with my mind. I am no doubt a writer today because I had a place to go as a kid, where I knew stories were essential, and where everybody also reveled in the wonder within books. — Sergio Troncoso

He had no longer free energy enough for spontaneous research and speculative thinking, but by the bedside of patients the direct external calls on his judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him out of himself. It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly - it was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back through life would say that the kindest man we have ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply-informed perception, has come to us in our need with a more sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers. Some of that twice-blessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his work at the Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and sustain him under anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy. — George Eliot

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. — Frank Herbert

If people don't want you to question something, that probably means you should question it. — Michel Templet

I've read quite a few readers' reviews of my book on Amazon, saying, 'Ah, he criticises the free market, he advocates central planning.' I don't do that for a minute! But this is our black and white, dichotomous way of thinking - which has really been harmful. — Ha-Joon Chang

Your mind can destroy your life! Mind your mind; think well! Detoxify your thought and be free! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah