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

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

We can’t have, like, willy-nilly proliferation of fake news. That’s crazy. You can’t have more types of fake news than real news. That’s allowing public deception to go unchecked. That’s crazy.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

I never ask anyone else’s opinion. They don’t count.

Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions.

We are all special cases.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

I would never exchange my life with anybody else’s.

The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

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.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

When I arrived, at first a lot of people were like, ‚This kid is different.‘

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

I don’t feel much pressure to fit in. I never have. I’ve always just wanted to do my thing. I have really good friends and good family, and if I don’t fit in somewhere else, I fit in at home.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people’s opinions.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

When you’re just like everybody else, you’ve nothing to offer other than your conformity.

I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

In a democracy, the well-being, individuality and happiness of every citizen is important for the overall prosperity, peace and happiness of the nation.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

I trust my taste. I trust it completely and I always have done, and I’ve always thought it isn’t that different from everybody else’s.

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

I think style is being so comfortable and confident in what you’re wearing. That’s what style is, ‚cause everybody’s got different style.

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

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

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

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

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

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

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.