Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I'm against fashionable thinking.

I've always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it.

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

I think there's something important in going against the grain and perhaps finding value in things that aren't necessarily institutionally recognized.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

… 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, and the first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

My father believed, like Pericles, that a man's genius could be easily judged by the number of unenlightened fools set in phalanx against his ideas.

If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction.

I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before. Any idea that came to me, the thing would be to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses.

I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.

I think I'm always trying to subvert conventions, and sometimes it's more successful than others.

I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.

Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.

It's really important, whether you're a conservative or a liberal, to always challenge the conventional wisdom, which is what I've tried to do in all my work.

Never accept ultimatums, conventional wisdom, or absolutes.

I think most of us are outsiders. And I think that's good because it makes you question things.

I love paradox. I like to go where people don't expect me to go.

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.