Charles Spurgeon Quotes

If you're looking where everybody else is looking, you're looking in the wrong spot.

When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote

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.

Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves - and be free.

If you read all the time what other people have done, you will the think the way they thought.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

Well as I say, don't believe everything that you read and don't be afraid to think and it is alright to understand what has gone before but don't just rely on copying but develop your internal voice and your own internal means of interpreting.

I don't like mimicking people. I don't like repeating talking points. I don't like arguing with people just to argue. I like actually coming up with an interesting thing to say that I don't think has been said before in that way.

Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.

Just as no great painting has ever been created by a committee, no great vision has ever emerged from the herd.

When a man ain't got no ideas of his own, he'd ought to be kind o' careful who he borrows 'em from.

I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.

Don’t just follow the trend. You may have heard me say that it’s good to think in terms of the physics approach of first principles. Which is, rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there.

As soon as you can say what you think and not what some other person has thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man.

You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.

My own thing is in my head. I hear sounds and if I don't get them together nobody else will.

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.

Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.

While we honour religion and believe it to be a powerful factor in elevating our race, we discriminate, as we hope our readers will also do, between it and dogmatism. Dogmatism has been the bane of civilization and a curse to mankind. It has degraded our sex, stifled intelligent inquiry, and persecuted every independent reformer and every noble cause.

The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

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.