Independence

If all you ever do is all you've ever done, then all you'll ever get is all you've ever got.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Our Founders rejected both a radical individualism that makes no room for others, and the dreary collectivism that crushes the individual. They gave us instead a society where individual freedom is anchored in communities.

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth, without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you.

Critical thinking is the key to our past, our present, and our future.

We are too experienced and too well educated to lead our lives as puppets. We cannot afford to listen silently then nod our heads and move on.

We dare not squander our education. We dare not squander our integrity. We must be brave to think critically. We must be free to believe in ourselves.

As you start your journey, the first thing you should do is throw away that store-bought map and begin to draw your own.

If you never venture beyond what you know, you've spawned your own limitations. You've erected the walls of your own private prison cell.

Where do the mermaids stand? Answer that question, and you could build a school, a nation, or a whole world on it.

We live in an age in which ideas, important ideas, are worn like articles of fashion — and for precisely the same reason articles of fashion are worn, which is to make the wearer look better and to feel a la mode.