Søren Kierkegaard on independent thinking

The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong.  The person who's right often has to stand alone. 

~ Søren Kierkegaard

Steve Jobs on non-conformists

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes... the ones who see things differently - they're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo.  You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.  About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.  Because they change things.

~ Steve Jobs

Steven Leuthold on being a contrarian

I am contrary but not for the sake of being contrary.  It’s good business.  When everybody hates something, we buy it.  When everybody loves something, we sell it.  There is a warm comfort in being part of the herd.  But I can live without it.

~ Steven Leuthold, 1937-2023

John Stuart Mill on conformity

That so few dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

~ John Stuart Mill

Mahatma Gandhi on standing against the crowd

It's easy to stand with the crowd; it takes courage to stand alone.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Frank Zappa on human progress

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. 

~ Frank Zappa

Henry David Thoreau on nonconformists

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground. 

~ Henry David Thoreau

Doug Casey on speaking out and how H.L. Mencken avoided persecution during WWI and the Roosevelt years

If you believe in thinking for yourself, or if you believe in free minds and free markets, you’re in the minority.  You better be careful. 

H.L. Mencken, undoubtedly one of the greatest public intellectuals in American history and the best journalist in our history, is a cautionary example.  During World War I and throughout the Roosevelt years, he basically stopped writing or saying anything controversial because he might’ve been singled out and persecuted.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on the Dangers of the Growing “Snitch Culture” in the US," International Man, March 10, 2021

Christopher Columbus on human progress

Nothing that results in human progress is achieved with unanimous consent.  Those that are enlightened before the others are condemned to pursue that light in spite of the others.

~ Christopher Columbus

Portrait of Columbus
1893

Thomas J. Watson, Jr. on independent thinking

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear the less the label of ‘crack-pot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.

~ Thomas J. Watson, Jr. president of IBM from 1952-1971

Ludwig von Mises on how private property and the free market allows non-conformists to exist

In the political sphere, there is no means for an individual or a small group of individuals to disobey the will of the majority. But in the intellectual field private property makes rebellion possible. The rebel has to pay a price for his independence; there are in this universe no prizes that can be won without sacrifices. But if a man is willing to pay the price, he is free to deviate from the ruling orthodoxy or neo-orthodoxy.

What would conditions have been in the socialist commonwealth for heretics like Kierkegaard, Schopenauer, Veblen, or Freud? For Monet, Courbet, Walt Whitman, Rilke, or Kafka? In all ages, pioneers of new ways of thinking and acting could work only because private property made contempt of the majority's ways possible. Only a few of these separatists were themselves economically independent enough to defy the government into the opinions of the majority. But they found in the climate of the free economy among the public people prepared to aid and support them. What would Marx have done without his patron, the manufacturer Friedrich Engels?

~ Ludwig von Mises, "The Rise of Capitalism," Liberty & Property

Ludwig von Mises on education and innovation

Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools.  They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action