Joichi Ito Quotes

I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself.

I think it's very desirable to be an individual and a free thinker.

Learn to do your own thinking - don’t let other people do it for you!

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

People who are able to do their own thinking should not allow others to do it for them.

I don't ever want to be the type of person to tell you what to think or what to believe. Whatever stage in your life that you are in, I want you to organically reach whatever conclusions that you possibly reach.

Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom.

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

The supreme lesson of any education should be to think for yourself and to be yourself; absent this attainment, education creates dangerous, stupefying conformity.

Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society…

I was never ideological in any sense, or a slave to any particular politics or religion. My solace and my inspiration always came from books and literature.

We must help the child to act for himself, will for himself, think for himself; this is the art of those who aspire to serve the spirit.

No one tells me what to think. I think for me.

All of my friends are independent in thought, that's important.

I have never been convinced throughout my life that one needs to be imitating others. I even tell my daughters not to look at me as a model. Everyone's condition is different, and the way that each person lives his or her life is different. What is important is that one utilizes one's intellect and not to be 100 percent sure about one's convictions. One should always leave room for doubt.

The first rule of survival is: Make your own rules. The hell anyone thinks about the way you're acting; listen only to yourself.

Wake-up! Think for yourself, be yourself and return to what is real.

I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.

In a world in which we are exposed to more information, more options, more philosophies, more perspectives than ever before, in which we must choose the values by which we will live (rather than unquestioningly follow some tradition for no better reason than that our own parents did), we need to be willing to stand on our own judgment and trust our own intelligence-to look at the world through our own eyes-to chart our course and think through how to achieve the future we want, to commit ourselves to continuous questioning and learning-to be, in a word, self-responsible.

Don't pay attention to "authorities," think for yourself.

Learn to see, listen, and think for yourself.

Listen to everyone, follow no one.