Rich or poor it’s nice to have money

The thought of being completely dependent disturbs people till the moment their eyes are opened to reality.

Life demands more thinking than remembering.

Anxiety, and the physical symptoms it causes, is merely fog along the path of independence and discovery.

I’ll not listen to reason… reason always means what someone else has got to say.

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,...

Nein, die Schule hat keinen bestimmenden Einfluss auf meine Entwicklung gehabt. Die Schule hat von meinen besonderen Anlagen wohl instinktiv etwas gespürt, sie aber als obstinate Untauglichkeit gewertet und verworfen. Ein Lehrer drohte, zufällig nicht...

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. – Hitchens 3:16

People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Silence. Montag sat like a carved white stone. The echo of the final hammer on his skull died slowly away into the black cavern where Faber waited for the echoes to subside. And then when...

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

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.

[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.”(The Record Lie)

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police … yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and...

My innocence is wearin’ thinBut my heart is growing strong.

Estaba destinado a aprender su propia sabiduría aparte de los otros o a aprender la sabiduría de los otros por sí mismo, errando entre las asechanzas del mundo.

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is...

The cliche about prison life is that I am actually integrated into it, ruined by it, when my accommodation to it is so overwhelming that I can no longer stand or even imagine freedom, life...

Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.

Inevitably it follows that anyone with an independent mind must become ‘one who resists or opposes an authority or established convention’: a rebel. …And if enough people come to agree with—and follow—the REBEL, we now...

People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn’t stop you from having your own opinion.

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don’t see many people doing it.

Be tough minded but tenderhearted.

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...

A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

Considering he was neither priest nor scholar, the young man gave sensible, thoughtful replies — the more so, perhaps, for being untrained, for he had not learned what he should believe or should not believe....

He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world’s store of ideas which...

Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.

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.

Do you know, the only people I can have a conversation with are the Jews? At least when they quote scripture at you they are not merely repeating something some priest has babbled in their...

If no one had ever challenged religious authority, there’d be no democracy, no public schools, women’s rights, improvements to science and medicine, evolution of slavery and no laws against child abuse or spousal abuse. I...

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

It turns out that indecision is a path itself; but figuratively, a vertical path – up or down – meaning it isn’t always a fruitless path. One is forgotten, but the other is glorified. To...

It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.

What is a genius? A person who demands little to nothing from others, but is often found extremely difficult to have around.

The only people we want to blame are ourselves, because it will be ourselves that we rely upon.

All the dreams you show up in are not your own.