The mind is free and the slightest thought has great influence. It is therefore important that you think enlightened thoughts. — Moroccan Proverbs
Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you. — Henry David Thoreau
This I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. — John Steinbeck
Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free. — Bertrand Russell
There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action. — W. Somerset Maugham
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt. — Bergen Evans
Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS! — Viktor E. Frankl
The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next. — Matthew Arnold
I'm a free person; I feel terribly free. They could put me in chains and I still would be free because my thoughts would be mine - and that's all I want to have. — Arthur Rubinstein
This is the consciousness revolution,
You got the right to think,
Don't think about it just do it — Eyedea
A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing. — Robert Green Ingersoll
The only free mind is one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity. — Emile M. Cioran
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. — Oscar Wilde
Top 10 Free Thought Quotes
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. — Benjamin Franklin
Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace. — Buddha
Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. Keep your thoughts free from hate, and you need have no fear from those who hate you. — George Washington Carver
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. — Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. — Louis D. Brandeis
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. — William O. Douglas
You are free to think thoughts of worry or joy, and whatever you choose will attract the same kind back to you. Worry attracts worry. Joy attracts joy. — Rhonda Byrne
I could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh, and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought. — Helen Keller
Why, of course, the people don't want war. — Hermann Goring
Creativity is not the domain of one single person. Through free-association of thoughts and brainstorming, an accidental suggestion can be the best solution. — Joshua Fernandez
Free Thought Image Quotes
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.
They Thought They Were Free Quotes
Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you. — George Orwell
No one is punished for free speech in Cuba. If free and inconvenient thoughts were a crime in our country, I would have been a good candidate for prison, with my advocacy for sexual self-determination. Those people are in prison because they are mercenaries paid by Washington. — Mariela Castro
Many whites, even white Southerners told me that even though it may have seemed like the blacks were being freed (by my actions) they felt more free and at ease themselves. They thought that my action didn't just free blacks but them, too. — Rosa Parks
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Study: 60% of young Americans plan to buy firearms. The other 40% were confused, saying they thought they were free under Obamacare. — Fred Thompson
Submit to me." So she said nothing, but looked doggedly and sadly at the shore, wrapped in its mantle of peace; as if the people there had fallen alseep, she thought; were free like smoke, were free to come and go like ghosts. They have no suffering there, she thought. — Virginia Woolf
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. — Frederick Douglass
But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. — John Adams
If you have a bad thought about yourself, tell it to go to hell because that is exactly where it came from.
I had a right to my own political opinions. I am a Southern woman, born with Revolutionary blood in my veins. Freedom of speech and of thought were my birthright, guaranteed, signed and sealed by the blood of our fathers. — Rose O'Neal Greenhow
Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin. — John Green
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. — John Adams
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.
Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality. — Ben Shapiro
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought. — Bertrand Russell
Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don't have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity. — Henepola Gunaratana
If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Independent Thought Quotes
A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young. — John Dewey
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority. — Benjamin Franklin
When you do not seek or need approval, you are at your most powerful. — Caroline Myss
One small positive thought in the morning can change you whole day.
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work. — Adrienne Rich
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism, are all too frequently those who . . . ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism-the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent thought. — Margaret Chase Smith
Lucifer represents life, though, progress, civilization, liberty, independence. Lucifer is the Logos, the Serpent, the Savior. — H. P. Blavatsky
How amazing is it to find someone who wants to hear about all the things that go in your head.
People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take. — Emma Goldman
Education in Chess has to be an education in independent thinking and judging. Chess must not be memorized. — Emanuel Lasker
Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. — Albert Einstein
I'm a modern woman in the sense of I take care of myself, I'm fiercely independent, and I'm really ambitious. Yet I have these old-school thoughts in my mind. — Eva Mendes
Human Thought Quotes
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: 'He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.' — Chinua Achebe
America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don't misuse a household pet. — Dick Gregory
If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut — Albert Einstein
The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. — Charles Bukowski
In my games I have sometimes found a combination intuitively simply feeling that it must be there. Yet I was not able to translate my thought processes into normal human language. — Mikhail Tal
Experiences have clearly shown that an approach which 'de-medicalizes' birth, restores dignity and humanity to the process of childbirth, and returns control to the mother is also the safest approach. — Michel Odent
Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence. — Louis Pasteur
I don't have any understanding of a human being who doesn't respect the beauty of life and that goes for all creatures that have thoughts, feelings and needs. — Alicia Silverstone
If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one's feelings by controlling one's thoughts - or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place. — Albert Ellis
Human beings are emotional amoral egoists, driven above all by emotional self-interest. All of our thoughts, beliefs and motivations are neurochemically mediated, some predetermined for survival, others alterable. — Nayef Al-Rodhan
Independence Of Thought Quotes
The right to criticize: the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood... Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. — Margaret Chase Smith
We have learned that beneath the surface of an ordinary everyday normal casual conscious existence there lies a vast dynamic world of impulse and dream, a hinterland of energy which has an independent existence of its own and laws of its own: laws which motivate all our thoughts and our actions. — Robert Edmond Jones
Cubism is not a manner but an aesthetic, and even a state of mind; it is therefore inevitably connected with every manifestation of contemporary thought. It is possible to invent a technique or a manner independently, but one cannot invent the whole complexity of a state of mind. — Juan Gris
Persons grouped around a fire or candle for warmth or light are less able to pursue independent thoughts, or even tasks, than people supplied with electric light. In the same way, the social and educational patterns latent in automation are those of self-employment and artistic autonomy. — Marshall McLuhan
The time has come for people of reason to say: Enough is Enough! Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous. — Richard Dawkins
Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste. — Voltaire
The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks. — Christopher Hitchens
The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. — Emma Goldman
Let the views of others educate and inform you, but let your decisions be a product of your own conclusions. — Jim Rohn
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake. — Rabindranath Tagore
Free Will Quotes
Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world. — Maria Montessori
Our confession will either imprison us or set us free. Our confession is the result of our believing, and our believing is the result of our right or wrong thinking. — Kenneth E. Hagin
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the Earth
And every man is free. — Langston Hughes
The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Scatter sunshine, forget self, think of others. Try this for a week and you will be surprised. — Norman Vincent Peale
No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free. — Assata Shakur
To be free from bondage the wise person must practise discrimination between One-Self and the ego-self.
By that alone you will become full of joy, recognising Self as Pure Being, Consciousness and Bliss. — Adi Shankara
Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will. — Jawaharlal Nehru
God will never send anybody to hell. If man goes to hell, he goes by his own free choice. — Billy Graham
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty. — Chief Joseph
Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by regular contact with outdoor growths - animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies - or it will dwindle and pale. — Walt Whitman
Independent Thinking Quotes
Merciless criticism and independent thinking are the two necessary traits of revolutionary thinking. — Bhagat Singh
The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions. — Noam Chomsky
Think before you speak. Read before you think. — Fran Lebowitz
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
A contrarian isn’t one who always objects — that’s a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently, from the ground up, and resists pressure to conform. — Naval Ravikant
I don't feel we need to be independent for me to feel confident in my Scottish identity. I think Scotland is pretty comfortable in its identity. We won't need independence to preserve it... if we don't become independent, it won't disappear; it isn't under existential threat. — Nicola Sturgeon
If you eat, invest, and think according to what the ‘news’ advocates, you’ll end nutritionally, financially, and morally bankrupt. — Naval Ravikant
A democratic education means that we educate people in a way that ensures they can think independently, that they can use information, knowledge, and technology, among other things, to draw their own conclusions. — Linda Darling-Hammond
If you eat, invest, and think according to what the ‘news’ advocates, you’ll end up bankrupt. — Naval Ravikant
Free Choice Quotes
[The] type of education now prevailing all over the world is directed against human freedom. State-controlled education ... deprives people of their free choice, creativity and brilliance. — Muammar al-Gaddafi
We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. — William Faulkner
My purpose is to allow people to move closer to actually being creatures of free choice, to genuinely reflect individual creativity and emotion, freeing the body of habitual tensions and wired-patterns of behaviour so that it may respond without inhibition to do what the person wants. — Moshe Feldenkrais
I desire not to desire, for my will is without value, since I am ignorant in any case. Therefore choose Thou for me what thou knowest to be best and do not put my perdition in what my autonomy and free choice prefer. — Bayazid Bastami
I desire not to desire, for my will is without value, since I am ignorant in any case. Therefore choose Thou for me what thou knowest to be best and do not put my perdition in what my autonomy and free choice prefer. — Bayazid AlBistami
We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
God maintains a delicate balance between keeping his existence sufficiently evident so people will know he's there and yet hiding his presence enough so that people who want to choose to ignore him can do it. This way, their choice of destiny is really free. — J.P. Moreland
Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds. — Dante Alighieri
And for man to look upon himself as a capital good, even if it did not impair his freedom, may seem to debase him... by investing in themselves, people can enlarge the range of choice available to them. It is one way free men can enhance their welfare. — Theodore William Schultz
You are free to choose, but the choices you make today will determine what you have, be, and do in the tomorrow of your life. — Zig Ziglar
True empathy is always free of any evaluative or diagnostic quality. This comes across to the recipient with some surprise. "If I am not being judged, perhaps I am not so evil or abnormal as I have thought". — Carl Rogers
Until COVID, I thought that free speech was a protected fundamental right guaranteed to all citizens of the United States of America by the Bill of Rights. Having been assigned core texts like 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and The Trial and Death of Socrates in fourth and fifth grade as a “gifted and talented” student in the California school system of the time, I believed there was no way anything like what was written in those books could happen here in the USA during the 21st century. — Robert W. Malone
There must be renewed recognition that societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police; this means there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war. — I. F. Stone
Gender has always been considered a fact immutable. But we now know it's actually more fluid, complex, and mysterious. Because of my success, I never have the courage to share my story. Not because I thought what I am is wrong but because of how the world treats those of us who wish to break free. — Geena Rocero
In a free society, people should have the right to criticize a religion; they should have the right to do so, and of course their criticisms are themselves open to criticism; that is the essence of freedom of speech and thought. — Gad Saad
Atheism ... that bugbear of women and fools ... is the very top and perfection of free-thinking. It is the grand arcanum to which a true genius naturally riseth, by a certain climax or gradation of thought, and without which he can never possess his soul in absolute liberty and repose. — George Berkeley
The problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with ... dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it. — John Dewey
How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! — Robert Browning
There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness. When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence. — Sri Aurobindo
I don't think there's any difference between a crush and profound love. I think the experience is that you dissolve your sentries and your battalions for a moment and you really do see that there is this unfixed free-flowing energy of emotion and thought between people, that it really is there. — Leonard Cohen
Man is really not freeing many aspects. He is dependent on his social circumstances, but he is free in his thinking, and here is the point of origin of sculpture. For me the formation of the thought is already sculpture. The thought is sculpture. — Joseph Beuys
What is it to be a fool for Christ? It is to control one's thoughts when they stray out of line. It is to make the mind empty and free. — Saint John Chrysostom
Even when you’d lost everything you thought there was to lose, somebody came along and gave you something for free. — Jenny Valentine
Who is journeying for freedom? The one who is already free. Thoughts are impediments to seeing your own face. Don't give rise to any thought, and discover who you are. — H. W. L. Poonja
The most miserable prison in the world is the prison we make for ourselves when we refuse to show mercy. Our thoughts become shackled, our emotions are chained, the will is almost paralyzed. But when we show mercy, all of these bonds are broken, and we enter into a joyful liberty that frees us to share God's love with others. — Warren W. Wiersbe
If the guy you’re dating doesn’t seem to be completely into you, or you feel the need to start ‘figuring him out,’ please consider the glorious thought that he might just not be that into you. And then free yourself to go find someone that is. — Greg Behrendt
I know nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which you are perfectly free; without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thought even of to-morrow. You go in any direction you please, without any guide save your fancy. — Guy de Maupassant
No thought lives in your head rent-free. — T. Harv Eker
Those... who find delight in freedom from attachment in the renunciation of clinging, free from the inflow of thoughts, they are like shining lights, having reached final liberation in the world. — Buddha
For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought must be very preceisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of bookkeeping. — Peter Medawar
We hold that the greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong, that in the exercise thereof people have an inviolable right to express their unbridled thoughts on all topics and personalities, being liable only for the abuse of that right. — William Randolph Hearst
Wake up and realize this is all made up of thoughts, just thoughts. Your appreciation of beauty is a thought; your aversion to an object that is ugly is a thought. Your craving or aversion is nothing but a passing thought in the mind. Realize this is just a thought and you will be free. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
It should seem that Negroes, of all Americans, would be found in the Free-thought fold, since they have suffered more than any other class of Americans from the dubious blessings of Christianity. — Hubert Harrison
The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul, breaking the mental manacles, getting the brain out of bondage, giving courage to thought, filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy. — Robert Green Ingersoll
The spirit of philosophy is one of free inquiry. It suspects all authority. Its function is to trace the uncritical assumptions of human thought to their hiding places, and in this pursuit it may finally end in denial or a frank admission of the incapacity of pure reason to reach the ultimate reality. — Muhammad Iqbal
I have passed in ignorance through a cycle of many rebirths, seeking the builder of the house. Continuous rebirth is a painful thing. But now, housebuilder, I have found you out. You will not build me a house again. All your rafters are broken, your ridge-pole shattered. My mind is free from active thought, and has made an end of craving. — Buddha
You only are free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great. — Maya Angelou
When the song is over, the mikes turned off, the lights dimmed, all the glitter and glamour shed, and I am left alone with my own thoughts, free to contemplate the paths that led me to where I am today, I pause to give thanks. — CeCe Winans
In Conclusion
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