Charles Bukowski Quotes

Watch what everyone else does--do the opposite. The majority is always wrong.

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

I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently.

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.

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

If I hear someone say something, and they're 100 per cent about it, then it's almost inevitable that I'll take the opposite view. I guess I feel at odds with things like society. Absolutism is always a trigger for me.

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

so i do what i do best. i move in the opposite direction.

Observe the masses and do the opposite

The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men

In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated.

Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the common beliefs of their day.

Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.

How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?

A contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling.

The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it's enormously useful in life.

No matter how efficient school training may be, it would only produce stagnation, orthodoxy, and rigid pedantry if there were no uncommon men pushing forward beyond the wisdom of their tutors.

It requires philosophy and heroism to rise above the opinion of the wise men of all nations and races.

Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?' Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.

If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.

I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.

Nothing in the world makes people so afraid as the influence of independent-minded people.

Neither believe nor reject any thing because any other person, or description of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven.