Quotes & Sayings About Thinking Independently

To be successful, we need everyone to think independently and work through disagreement to decide what's best. — Ray Dalio

There are only two forces that can withstand the force of the war's spirit when it seizes upon the world. The one is the force of an independently thinking, free, and articulate democracy. The other is the force of an instructed and enlightened public opinion. — Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Baroness Pethick-Lawrence

We are living in a society that is totally dependent on science and high technology, and yet most of us are effectively alienated and excluded from its workings, from the values of science, the methods of science, and the language of science. A good place to start would be for as many of us as possible to begin to understand the decision-making and the basis for those decisions, and to act independently and not be manipulated into thinking one thing or another, but to learn how to think. That's what science does. — Ann Druyan

I just love Cape Breton fiddling! I think it's very close. They derive their music from Scottish music. Well, in Donegal we're very influenced by Scottish music as well. Independently the two areas became very alike, because they kind of changed the music a bit from Scotland and we did the same. — Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh

There is beauty in thinking independently. — Debasish Mridha

Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community. — Albert Einstein

I have dogs in my house and much like teenagers at some point, they leave the parents. Even though they're in the same house, they live independently. I think that's how I live with the Chihuahuas. — George Lopez

I also believe that everyone needs to think independently and make their own decisions on what makes the most sense. — Ray Dalio

Hayek made a quite fruitful suggestion, made contemporaneously by the psychologist Donald Hebb, that whatever kind of encounter the sensory system has with the world, a corresponding event between a particular cell in the brain and some other cell carrying the information from the outside word must result in reinforcement of the connection between those cells. These day, this is known as a Hebbian synapse, but von Hayek quite independently came upon the idea. I think the essence of his analysis still remains with us . — Gerald Edelman

Listen, nitwit, what good will it do you to know whether I am "sincere" or "insincere"? What does this have to do with whether or not my thoughts are right? I can utter a soaring truth "insincerely" and say the stupidest thing "sincerely". Learn to judge the thought independently of who says it or how. — Witold Gombrowicz

When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of 'symbolic images.' The first step to thinking is a painted vision of these inner pictures whose origin cannot be reduced only and firstly to the sensual perception but which are produced by an 'instinct to imagining' and which are re-produced by different individuals independently, i.e. collectively ... But the archaic image is also the necessary predisposition and the source of a scientific attitude. To a total recognition belong also those images out of which have grown the rational concepts. — Wolfgang Pauli

I think the truth is the Marvel fiefdom exists very independently inside the Disney world, inside the Disney universe. They're not resistant to that kind of thing but they have their, you know there is a whole sort of machine energy and momentum that is the sort of creative drive behind the whole universe that has a big impact on the individual films. I'm glad those scenes got out there. And we've got a few interesting deleted scenes on this. — Kenneth Branagh

To make money in the markets, you have to think independently and be humble. — Ray Dalio

The purpose of such propaganda phrases as "war on terrorism" and attacking "those who hate freedom" is to paralyze individual thought as well as to condition people to act as one mass, as when President Bush attempted to end debate on Iraq by claiming that the American people were of one voice. The modern war president removes the individual nature of those who live in it by forcing us into a uniform state where the complexities of those we fight are erased. The enemy-terrorism, Iraq, Bin Laden, Hussein-becomes one threatening category, something to be defeated and destroyed, so that the public response will be one of reaction to fear and threat rather than creatively and independently thinking for oneself. Our best hope for overcoming perpetual thinking about war and perpetual fear about both real and imagined threats is to question our leaders and their use of empty slogans that offer little rationale, explanation or historical context. — Nancy Snow

The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service to the community their highest life problem. — Albert Einstein

Men think they think upon the great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side — Mark Twain

Individualism is at once an ethical-psychological concept and an ethical-political one. As an ethical-psychological concept, individualism holds that a human being should think and judge independently, respecting nothing more than the sovereignty of his or her mind; thus, it is intimately connected with the concept of autonomy. As an ethical-political concept, individualism upholds the supremacy of individual rights — Nathaniel Branden

Education means the ability to think independently and creatively, and development of the skill of applying one's knowledge in dealing with people and situations in the real world. — Oliver DeMille

What we think of as physical reality is an intermingling of appropriate realities, a fluid massive consciousness in which each of us exists independently of each other and yet coexists interdependently with each other. — Gary Zukav

My parents had an independent theater company here in Sweden during the 1980s, so I was raised watching my parents create independently, having a lot of fun and just doing what they wanted to do. I think that idea of independence as an artist was something I was always used to. And then I entered the industry from a very commercial perspective, and things were very different then from what I grew up with. — Robyn

Today we are at a crossroads. The technology is available for two great options: The massive surveillance state, or the renewed freedom of a deeply-involved citizenry thinking independently and holding the government to the highest standards. — Oliver DeMille

I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently. — Werner Herzog

Tom Cruise, the church's most coveted, celebrated, and protected celebrity member, and David Miscavige, the tyrannical leader and current head of the church. Ironically, for me and for most other people who have left the church and spoken out against it, the very qualities that we've been penalized for - defying, questioning, thinking independently - are the same qualities that made us prime candidates for Scientology in the first place. — Leah Remini

I think of people as members of an audience. But an audience acts independently of every individual. It's an organism on its own. I focus on that living hydra in the dark. — Emo Philips

Color ... thinks by itself, independently of the object it clothes. — Charles Baudelaire

The ocean stands for God, the sole substance, and individual beings are like waves - which are modes of the sea. Each wave has its own shape that it holds for a certain time, but the wave is not separate from the sea and cannot be conceived to exist independently of it. Of course, this is only a metaphor; unlike an infinite God, an ocean has boundaries, and moreover the image of the sea represents God only in the attributes of extension. But maybe we can also imagine the mind of God - that is to say, the infinite totality of thinking - as like the sea, and the thoughts of finite beings as like waves that arise and then pass away. — Clare Carlisle

Think independently and critically, but never forget to think with understanding and love. — Debasish Mridha

In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race. — John Stuart Mill

Democracy is the art of thinking independently together. — Alexander Meiklejohn

Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society. For since any given rule implies majority acceptance, any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently-thinking individuals. The new idea, much less the new critical idea, must needs begin as a small minority opinion; therefore, the State must nip the view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies the opinions of the mass. "Listen only to your brothers" or "adjust to society" thus become ideological weapons for crushing individual dissent. By such measures, the masses will never learn of the nonexistence of their Emperor's clothes. — Murray N. Rothbard

Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible. — James Surowiecki

For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth. — Plutarch

The aim of science is to apprehend this purely intelligible world as a thing in itself, an object which is what it is independently of all thinking, and thus antithetical to the sensible world ... The world of thought is the universal, the timeless and spaceless, the absolutely necessary, whereas the world of sense is the contingent, the changing and moving appearance which somehow indicates or symbolizes it. — Robin G. Collingwood

Most men use their knowledge only under guidance from others because they lack the courage to think independently using their own reasoning abilities. It takes intellectual daring to discover the truth. — Immanuel Kant

Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. — Ralph Charell

I had been thinking independently about our ability to forget things that happened, specifically, events that clearly were wrong, that crossed the line. It seemed to me during the 2000 election recount that the media's narrative was being orchestrated. Shockingly, after the Supreme Court decision, the media simply said, "Time to move on," end of reporting: "Here's the new story." And everyone forgot. — Robert Kane Pappas

Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe. — Friedrich Hayek

Of course, there are different truths on different levels. Things are true relative to other things; "long" and "short" relate to each other, "high" and "low," and so on. But is there any absolute truth? Something self-sufficient, independently true in itself? I don't think so. — Dalai Lama

Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking — Albert Einstein

The United States is a society in which people not only can get by without knowing much about the wider world but are systematically encouraged not to think independently or critically, and instead to accept the mythology of the United States as a benevolent, misunderstood giant as it lumbers around the world trying to do good. — Robert Jensen