Independence

BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BE BOLD. Keep on reading. And remember when you hear yourself saying you don't have time anymore to read — then you're getting old. That means they got to you, after all.

This attitude of opposition is not justified as a strategy, as a means to an end, a way of changing the world. It is, rather, the best way of being in the world.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.

To think for yourself — not narrowly, but rather as a mind — you must be able to talk to yourself: well, openly, and at length.

You cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one.

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

It means insisting that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be different.

Remember that every government service, every offer of government-financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom.

Go alone; refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

You've pleased your teachers and your parents, and now you have to do something harder, which is to please yourself and to do things that you in your heart know to be right and that you're proud of.