Everything popular is wrong.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

Learn to think continentally.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

Religion is just mind control.

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

I’m a problem-solver.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

I was never a boy magnet at school. There was always the girl all the guys liked and wanted to date, but it was never me.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

When I put out ‚Video Games‘ in May 2011, it was a 5:25-minute love song; I was surprised when a lot of people said they were listening to it. I was surprised when it went to the radio, without me even knowing how something like that even happens!

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left – which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study – are not likely to get much attention.

Only the aspirants for president are fool enough to believe what they read in the newspapers.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

I often advocate that we look at many sides of an issue, walk in someone else’s shoes, and identify and reject false choices.

I’ve known for years that the university underserved the community, because we assumed that university education is for 18- to 22-year-olds, which is a proposition that’s so absurd it is absolutely mind-boggling that anyone ever conceptualized it. Why wouldn’t you take university courses throughout your entire life?

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

By 2003, every fool was getting into real estate. The checkout girl at my local supermarket handed me her newly printed real estate agent business card.

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves – who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.