Bertrand Russell Quotes

I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgments.

When schools produce students who learned to think on the left or on the right, they're not thinking for themselves.

I'm often asked - and occasionally in an accusatory way - 'Are you atheist?' And it's like, 'You know, the only 'ist' I am is a scientist, all right?' I don't associate with movements. I'm not an 'ism.' I just - I think for myself.

I've always been very liberal when it comes to people thinking for themselves.

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

The point of a philosophical spirit is to rely primarily upon one's own thinking.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.

He who dares not reason, is a slave.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

You must avoid letting anyone usurp your freedom of thought in any way, whether on religious or other grounds. People must use their minds and think and there are situations where the use of the intellect is necessary so that excessive fantasy or fancy can be held in check.

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.

The proper business of a University is ... not to tell us ... what we ought to believe, and make us accept the belief as a duty; but to give us information and training, and help us to form our own beliefs in a manner worthy of intelligent beings.

The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.

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 it is essential for right thinking.

Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

I had always been scrupulously careful to avoid the smallest suggestion of infant indoctrination, which I think is ultimately responsible for much of the evil in the world. Others, less close to her, showed no such scruples, which upset me, as I very much wanted her, as I want all children, to make up her own mind freely when she became old enough to do so. I would encourage her to think, without telling her what to think.

Thought must never submit, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, save to the facts themselves, because, for thought, submission would mean ceasing to be.

In matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard for any other consideration.

I am also atheist or agnostic (I don't even know the difference). I've never been to church and prefer to think for myself.

Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

We owe it to our kids to inform them and train them how to think, not what to think.

Opinions are not to be learned by rote, like the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a dictionary. They are conclusions to be formed, and formed by each individual in the sacred and free citadel of the mind, and there enshrined beyond the arm of law to reach, or force to shake; ay! and beyond the right of impertinent curiosity to violate, or presumptuous arrogance to threaten.

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

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

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.