Autonomy refers to one’s ability to make independent decisions and act on them based on personal values and beliefs, without external influence. I like to think of autonomy as “intellectual freedom and self-government of thought”. Autonomy leads to cognition through reason, logic, and deduction; or, critical thinking, in short, and is a core driver of one’s individuality and identity.

Now, let’s consider the words of history’s great thinkers on the topic of autonomy! The Big List Of Quotes On Autonomy is organized by the thinker’s year of birth.

1. Sun Tzu – born 6th century BCE

“The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.”
“Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.”
“… the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him.”
“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”
“Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.”
“In war, practice dissimulation, and you will succeed.”
“He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.”

2. Plato – born 428 BCE

“The honorable mind which is to form a healthy judgment should have had no experience or contamination of evil habits when young.”

3. Aristotle – born 384 BCE

“Ignorance – what is called ignorance not in virtue of a negation but in virtue of a disposition – is error coming about through deduction.”
“What is understandable, and understanding, differ from what is opinable, and opinion, because understanding is universal and through necessities, and what is necessary cannot be otherwise… it is not possible to opine and to understand the same thing at the same time…”
“The things we seek are equal in number to those we understand. We seek four things: the fact, the reason why, if it is, what it is.”
“… from perception there comes memory, as we call it, and from memory, experience… And from experience… there comes a principle of skill and of understanding – of skill if it deals with how things come about, of understanding if it deals with what is the case.”
“… it is not possible for anything to be truer than understanding, except comprehension…”
“… if we grasp the starting-points of the reputable deductions on any subject we grasp those of the refutations.”
“… knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience…”
“… excellence in deliberation involves reasoning…”

4. Cicero – born 106 BCE

“… the most marked difference between man and beast is this… man – because he is endowed with reason, by which he comprehends the chain of consequences, perceives the cause of things, understands the relation of cause to effect and of effect to cause, draws analogies, and connects and associates the present and the future – easily surveys the course of his whole life and makes the necessary preparations for its conduct.”
“… the body must be trained and so disciplined that it can obey the dictates of judgment and reason in attending to business and in enduring toil. But that moral goodness which is our theme depends wholly upon the thought and attention given to it by the mind.”
“… to employ reason and speech rationally, to do with careful consideration whatever one does, and in everything to discern the truth and to uphold it – that is proper.”
“… reason commands, appetite obeys.”

5. Marcus Aurelius – born 121

“… don’t then let this directing mind of yours be enslaved any longer – no more jerking to the strings of selfish impulse, no more disquiet at your present or suspicion of your future fate.”
“… all things of the mind are dreams and delusion…”
“If you discover in human life something better than justice, truth, self-control, courage – in short, something better than the self-sufficiency of your own mind which keeps you acting in accord with true reason… then turn to it with all your heart and enjoy this prime good you have found. But if nothing is shown to be better than the very god that is seated in you, which has brought all your own impulses under its control, which scrutinizes your thoughts… which has subordinated itself to the gods and takes care of men – if you find all else by comparison with this small and paltry, then give no room to anything else.”
“Nothing is so conducive to greatness of mind as the ability to subject each element of our experience in life to methodical and truthful examination.”
“No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation than that into his own mind…”
“… anxieties can only come from your internal judgement…”
“Be your own master… things cannot touch the mind: they are external and inert… remove the thought ‘I am hurt’, and the hurt itself is removed.”
“… men are at odds with their most constant companion, the Reason which governs all things…”
“… obedience to reason is no great burden, but a source of relief.”
“Your mind will take on the character of your most frequent thoughts: souls are dyed by thoughts.”
“… reverence of your own mind and the value you give to it will make you acceptable to yourself.”
“All that lies outside my own mind is nothing to it.”
“It is shameful that the face should be so obedient, shaping and ordering its expression as the mind dictates, when the mind cannot impose its own shape and order on itself.”
“Remember that your directing mind becomes invincible when it withdraws into its own self-sufficiency, not doing anything it does not wish to do… a mind free from passions is a fortress: people have no stronger place of retreat, and someone taking refuge here is then impregnable.”
“The power of the mind spreads everywhere and permeates no less than the air: it is there for all who want to absorb it, just like the air for those who can draw breath.”
“… it is only in your mind that damage or harm can be done to you – they have no other existence.”
“That all is as thinking makes it so – and you control your thinking. So remove your judgements whenever you wish and then there is calm – as the sailor rounding the cape finds smooth water and the welcome of a waveless bay.”

6. Niccolò Machiavelli – born 1469

“There are actually three kinds of mind: one grasps things unaided, the second sees what another has grasped, the third grasps nothing and sees nothing. The first kind is extremely valuable, the second valuable, the third useless.”

7. Jean Bodin – born 1530

“… human felicity springs from the union of action and contemplation.”
“There are three principal parts of the soul in a man, that is to say the speculative reason, the practical reason, and the factive imagination.”
“The golden mean that everyone is looking for is not secured by a numerical calculation, but in the sphere of morals means [and] rule of reason…“

8. Miyamoto Musashi – born 1584

“… the mind becomes like water: water takes on the shape of whatever it fills, be it angled or round, and can be a single drop or a vast ocean… The mindset that overcomes one enemy, or a thousand, or ten thousand, is the same.”
“Having one thing, to understand ten thousand – this is an underlying principle of Strategy.”
“If… your mindset becomes slightly skewed, later it may become greatly awry – you should examine this.”
“At quiet times, your mind should not become quiet… fill any places where your mind is lacking, but do not allow it to become overfull at all.”
“Your mindset should not be affected by your body, nor your body by your mind… in battle, even when everything is in chaos, your mind in unshakeable”
“… the major ‘models’ and standards in the world, seen together, are all the biases of individual minds and, based on these distortions, go against the true Way.”
“Now, you should avoid allowing the mind to become fixed anywhere, and strike where [the enemy] comes out. This requires extensive investigation.”
“… having absorbed the principles of strategy into your body, you come to see the opponent as the troops, and you yourself become the general, not giving the enemy even the slightest freedom, not allowing him either to swing his sword or thrust with it. Realizing that everything submits to your intent, you should make it so that the opponent cannot even conceive a tactic in his mind. This is an essential thing.”

9. Thomas Hobbes – born 1588

“There is no other act of man’s mind… but to be born a man, and live with the use of his five senses… For besides sense, and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion; though by the help of speech, and method, the same faculties may be improved to such a height, as to distinguish men from all other living creatures.”

10. René Descartes – born 1596

“The aim of our studies should be to direct the mind with a view to forming true and sound judgements about whatever comes before it.”
“If… someone seriously wishes to investigate the truth of things, he ought… consider simply how to increase the natural light of his reason…”
“All knowledge is certain and evident cognition.”
“… the deduction or pure inference of one thing from another can never be performed wrongly by an intellect which is in the least degree rational…”
“… let us now review all the actions of the intellect by means of which we are able to arrive at a knowledge of things with no fear of being mistaken. We recognize only two: intuition and deduction… intuition is the indubitable conception of a clear and attentive mind which proceeds solely from the light of reason… deduction in a sense gets its certainty from memory… the first principles themselves are known only through intuition, and the remote conclusions only through deduction.”
“… nothing can be added to the clear light of reason which does not in some way dim it.”
“… reason… is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other with which human beings are endowed, as it is the source of all the rest.”
“… nothing can be known prior to the intellect…”
“Within ourselves we are aware that, while it is the intellect alone that is capable of knowledge, it can be helped or hindered by three other faculties, viz. imagination, sense-perception, and memory.”
“… guard against our reason’s taking a holiday while we are investigating the truth about some issue…”
“Finally we must make use of all the aids which intellect, imagination, sense-perception, and memory afford in order, firstly, to intuit simple propositions distinctly; secondly, to combine correctly the matters under investigation with what we already know, so that they too may be known; and thirdly, to find out what things should be compared with each other so that we make the most thorough use of all our human powers.”
“Where knowledge of things is concerned, only two factors need to be considered: ourselves, the knowing subjects, and the things which are the objects of knowledge. As for ourselves, there are only four faculties which we can use for this purpose, viz. intellect, imagination, sense-perception and memory. It is of course only the intellect that is capable of perceiving the truth, but it has to be assisted by imagination, sense-perception and memory if we are not to omit anything which lies within our power.”
“We have free will, enabling us to withhold our assent in doubtful matters and hence avoid error.”
“It is not possible for us to doubt that we exist while we are doubting… For it is a contradiction to suppose that what thinks does not, at the very time when it is thinking, exist. Accordingly, this piece of knowledge – I am thinking, therefore I exist – is the first and most certain of all to concur to anyone who philosophizes in an orderly way.”
“All the modes of thinking that we experience within ourselves can be brought under two general headings: perception, or the operation of the intellect, and volition, or the operation of the will.”
“Right from infancy our mind was swamped with a thousand… preconceived opinions; and in later childhood, forgetting that they were adopted without sufficient examination, it regarded them as known by the senses or implanted by nature, and accepted them as utterly true and evident.”
“… our nature consists in thinking…”
“… nothing has a permanent place, except as determined by our thought.”
“… there is nothing in us which we must attribute to our soul except our thoughts… the various perceptions or modes of knowledge present in us may be called its passions, in a general sense, for it is often not our soul which makes them such as they are, and the soul always receives them from the things that are represented by them.”
“But the will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained.”
“… passions jostle the will in opposite ways; and since the will obeys first the one and then the other, it is continually opposed to itself, and so it renders the soul enslaved and miserable.”
“There is no soul so weak that it cannot, if well-directed, acquire an absolute power over its passions.”
“… – thought; this alone is inseparable from me. I am, I exist – that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist… But what then am I? A thing that thinks.”
“… I cannot complain that the will or freedom of choice which I received from God is not sufficiently extensive or perfect, since I know by experience that it is not restricted in any way. Indeed, I think it is very noteworthy that there is nothing else in me which is so perfect and so great…”

11. Blaise Pascal – born 1623

“Imagination… is the part of the human being which dominates, this mistress of error and falsehood, and all the more treacherous because it is not consistently treacherous… This proud, powerful enemy of reason… cannot make fools into wise men, but it can make them happy, unlike reason, which can only make its friends miserable, one enveloping them with glory, the other with shame.”
“Imagination orders everything. It is the spring of beauty… and happiness which is the be-all and the end-all of the world.”
“Human beings are simply a subject full of natural error, which cannot be eradicated without grace. [Nothing] points them towards the truth. Everything deceives them. These two principles of truth, reason and the senses, apart from the fact that each of them lacks sincerity, mutually deceive one another. The senses deceive reason through false appearances, and the very deceit they play on the soul is played back on them in return. Reason takes it revenge. The passions of the soul disturb the senses and give them false impressions. They lie and deceive themselves at will.”
“Everyone should study their thoughts. They will find them all centred on the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do it is simply to shed some light on the future. The present is never our end. Past and present are our means, only the future is our end. And so we never actually live, though we hope to, and in constantly striving for happiness it is inevitable that we will never achieve it.”
“The world judges a great number of things in a state of natural ignorance, the true seat of man.”
“… knowledge is clouded by the passions.”
“All our dignity consists therefore of thought. It is from there that we must be lifted up and not from space and time, which we could never fill. So let us work on thinking well. That is the principle of morality.”
“All the brilliance of greatness has no attraction for people who are involved in pursuits of the mind.”
“Memory is necessary for all the operations of reason.”
“… the morality of judgement has no time for the morality of the mind… For judgement is what goes with feeling, as knowledge goes with the mind.”
“The heart has its reasons which reason itself does not know… The only knowledge which is contrary to both common sense and human nature is the only one which has always existed among men.”
“…tranquility in… ignorance is monstrous…”
“Our imagination so magnifies the present by dint of thinking about it continually, and so reduces eternity for lack of thinking about it, that we turn eternity into a void and a void into an eternity. And all this has such strong roots within us, that all our reason cannot save us from it and that…”

12. David Hume – born 1711

“All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds… IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS… Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning…”
“Thus it appears, that the belief or asset, which always attends the memory and senses, is nothing but the vivacity of those perceptions they present; and that this alone distinguishes them from the imagination. To believe is in this case to feel an immediate impression of the senses, or a repetition of that impression in the memory. ‘Tis merely the force and liveliness of the perception, which constitutes the first act of the judgment, and lays the foundation of that reasoning, which we build upon it, when we trace the relation of cause and effect.”
“There is implanted in the human mind a perception of pain and pleasure, as the chief spring and moving principle of all its actions.”
“… it appears upon the whole, that every kind of opinion or judgment, which amounts not to knowledge, is deriv’d entirely from the force and vivacity of the perception, and that these qualities constitute in the mind, what we call the BELIEF of the existence of any object. This force and this vivacity are most conspicuous in the memory; and therefore our confidence in the veracity of that faculty is the greatest imaginable, and equals in many respects the assurance of a demonstration… The belief, which attends our memory, is of the same nature with that, which is deriv’d from our judgments: Nor is there any difference betwixt that judgment, which is deriv’d from a constant and uniform connexion of causes and effects, and that which depends upon an interrupted and uncertain.”
“… all knowledge resolves itself into probability, and becomes at last of the same nature with that evidence, which we employ in common life…”
“As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of this succession of perceptions, ‘tis to be consider’d, upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we never shou’d have any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects, which constitute our self or person. But having once acquir’d this notion of causation from the memory, we can extend the same chain of causes, and consequently the identity of our persons beyond our memory, and can comprehend times, and circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely forgot, but suppose in general to have existed. For how few of our past actions are there, of which we have any memory?… Identity depends on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity, by means of that easy transition they occasion.”
“‘Tis certain, that the mind, in its perceptions, must begin somewhere; and that since the impressions precede their correspondent ideas, there must be some impressions, which without any introduction make their appearance in the soul…“
“Ideas never admit of a total union, but are endow’d with a kind of impenetrability, by which they exclude each other, and are capable of forming a compound by their conjunction, not by their mixture. On the other hand, impressions and passions are susceptible of an entire union; and like colours, may be blended so perfectly together, that each of them may lose itself, and contribute only to vary that uniform impression, which arises from the whole.“
“Since reason alone can never produce any action, or give rise to volition… the same faculty is as incapable of preventing volition, or of disputing the preference with any passion or emotion… Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion, but a contrary impulse… Thus it appears… Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”
“Upon the whole, this struggle of passion and of reason, as it is call’d, diversifies human life, and makes men so different not only from each other, but also from themselves in different times.”
“Since morals… have an influence on the actions and affections… they cannot be deriv’d from reason… The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.”
“Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood.”
“… our passions, volitions, and actions, are not… either contrary or conformable to reason.”
“… reason… can have influence on our conduct only after two ways: Either when it excites a passion by informing us of the existence of something which is a proper object of it; or when it discovers the connexion of causes and effects, so as to afford us means of exerting any passion. These are the only kinds of judgment, which can accompany our actions.”
“All the advantages of art are owing to human reason…”
“There are many… qualities of the mind, whose merit is deriv’d from the same origin. Industry, perseverance, patience, activity, vigilance, application, constancy… temperance, frugality, economy, resolution…”

13. Immanuel Kant – born 1724

“There is… no free will: the will is subject to the strict law of necessity.”
“… hence he always admits freedom to think, without which there is no reason. In the same way he must also assume freedom of the will in acting, without which there would be no morals, when… he wants to proceed in his righteous conduct in conformity with the eternal laws of duty and not to be a plaything of his instincts and inclinations…”
“Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minority is inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment.”
“For… enlightenment… nothing is required but freedom… freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters… The public use of one’s reason must always be free…”
“…all moral concepts have their seat and origin completely a priori in reason…”
“The dependence upon the principle of autonomy of a will that is not absolutely good (moral necessitation) is obligation… The objective necessity of an action from obligation is called duty.”
“Will is a kind of causality of living beings insofar as they are rational, and freedom would be that property of such casualty that it can be efficient independently of alien causes determining it…”
“… what, then, can freedom of the will be other than autonomy, that is, the will’s property of being a law to itself?”
“… a rational being must regard himself as intelligence as belonging not to the world of sense but to the world of understanding…”
“Freedom… is a mere idea… It holds only as a necessary presupposition of reason in a being that believes itself to be conscious of a will…”
“The principle of one’s own happiness, however much understanding and reason may be used in it, still contains no determining ground for the will other than such as is suitable to the lower faculty of desire… insofar as reason of itself determines the will, is reason a true higher faculty of desire, to which the pathologically determinable is subordinate, and then only is reason really, and indeed specifically, distinct from the latter…”
“To be happy is necessarily the demand of every rational but finite being and therefore an unavoidable determining ground of its faculty of desire.”
“Autonomy of the will is the sole principle of all moral laws and of duties in keeping with them… moral law expresses nothing other than the autonomy of pure practical reason, that is, freedom…”
“… freedom [is] a regulative principle of reason… of all the intelligible absolutely nothing [is cognized] except freedom (by means of the moral law)…”
“It is a priori (morally) necessary to produce the highest good through the freedom of the will: the condition of its possibility must therefore rest solely on a priori grounds of cognition.”
“Freedom, and the consciousness of freedom as an ability to follow the moral law with an unyielding disposition, is independence from the inclinations, at least as motives determining our desire, and so far as I am conscious of this freedom in following my moral maxims, it is the sole source of an unchangeable contentment, necessarily combined with it and resting on no special feeling, and this can be called intellectual contentment.”
“… possession of power unavoidably corrupts the free judgment of reason.”
“The faculty of desire whose inner determining ground… lies within the subject’s reason is called the will.”
“… the will directs with absolute necessity and is itself subject to no necessitation. Only choice can therefore be called free.”
“… intellectual and moral predisposition [is] called conscience…”
“Human reason… is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss… but which it also cannot answer…”
“The charm in expanding one’s cognitions is so great that one can be stopped in one’s progress only by bumping into a clear contradiction.”
“… reason is the faculty that provides the principles of cognition a priori.”
“… everything practical, insofar as it contains motives, is related to feelings, which belong among empirical sources of cognition.”
“… no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience every cognition begins.”
“… certain cognitions even abandon the field of all possible experiences, and seem to expand the domain of our judgments beyond all bounds of experience through concepts to which no corresponding object at all can be given in experience. And precisely in these latter cognitions, which go beyond the world of the senses, where experience can give neither guidance nor correction, lie the investigations of our reason that we hold to be far more preeminent in their importance and sublime in their final aim than everything that the understanding can learn in the field of appearance… The unavoidable problems of pure reason itself are God, freedom and immortality.”
“… appearances… exist… only in us.”
“… spontaneity of cognition, is the understanding.”
“The understanding is not capable of intuiting anything, and the senses are not capable of thinking anything. Only from their unification can cognition arise.”
“All intuitions… rest on affections…”
“The possibility of an experience in general and cognition of its objects rest on three subjective sources of cognition: sense, imagination, and apperception; each of these can be considered empirically, namely in application to given appearances, but they are also elements or foundations a priori that make this empirical use itself possible. Sense represents the appearances empirically in perception, the imagination in association (and reproduction), and apperception in the empirical consciousness of the identity of these reproductive representations with the appearances through which they were given, hence in recognition.”
“The unity of apperception in relation to the synthesis of the imagination is the understanding…”
“We… have a pure imagination, as a fundamental faculty of the human soul, that grounds all cognition a priori. By its means we bring into combination the manifold of intuition on the one side and the condition of the necessary unity of apperception on the other. Both extremes, namely sensibility and understanding, must necessarily be connected by means of this transcendental function of the imagination, since otherwise the former would to be sure yield appearances but no objects of an empirical cognition, hence there would be no experience… Sensibility gives us forms (of intuition), but the understanding gives us rules.”
“That representation that can be given prior to all thinking is called intuition.”
“Understanding is, generally speaking, the faculty of cognitions.”
“The first pure cognition of the understanding… on which the whole of the rest of its use is grounded, and that is at the same time also entirely independent from all conditions of sensible intuition, is the principle of the original synthetic unity of apperception. Thus the mere form of outer sensible intuition, space, is not yet cognition at all; it only gives the manifold of intuition a priori for a possible cognition.”
“… the determination of my existence can only occur in correspondence with… inner sense… I therefore have no cognition of myself as I am, but only as I appear to myself.”
“… I exist as an intelligence that is merely conscious…”
“General logic is constructed on a plan that corresponds quite precisely with the division of the higher faculties of cognition. These are: understanding, the power of judgment, and reason.”
“… time is the only form of intuition…”
“All of our cognitions… lie in the entirety of all possible experience, and transcendental truth… The possibility of experience is therefore that which gives all of our cognitions a priori objective reality.”
“Perception is empirical consciousness, one in which there is at the same time sensation.”
“The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.”
“Reflection… [is] the state of mind in which we first prepare ourselves to find out the subjective conditions under which we can arrive at concepts.”
“All our cognition starts from the senses, goes from there to the understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which there is nothing higher to be found in us…”
“If the understanding may be a faculty of unity of appearances by means of rules, then reason is the faculty of the unity of the rules of understanding under principles. Thus it never applies directly to experience or to any object, but instead applies to the understanding, in order to give unity a priori through concepts to the understanding’s manifold cognitions, which may be called “the unity of reason”, and is of an altogether different kind than any unity that can be achieved by the understanding. This is the universal concept of the faculty of reason, as far as that concept can be made comprehensible wholly in the absence of examples.”
“… reason in its logical use seeks its conclusion…”
“… I cannot really perceive external things, but only infer their existence from my inner perceptions…”
“… in itself the soul cognizes: Reason is the faculty of principles.”
“… I cognize myself not by being conscious of myself as thinking, but only if I am conscious to myself of the intuition of myself as determined in regard to the function of thought.”
“… reason sees itself, in the midst of its greatest expectations, so entangled in a crowd of arguments and counterarguments that it is not feasible, on account either of its honor or even of its security, for reason to withdraw and look upon the quarrel with indifference, as mere shadow boxing, still less for it simply to command peace, interested as it is in the object of the dispute…”
“… every human being has an empirical character for his power of choice, which is nothing other than a certain causality of his reason…”
“… human reason contains not only ideas but also ideals… The aim of reason with its ideal is… a thoroughgoing determination in accordance with a priori rules; hence it thinks for itself an object that is to be thoroughly determinable in accordance with principles, even though the sufficient conditions for this are absent from experience, and thus the concept itself is transcendent.”
“… reason… spreads its wings in vain when seeking to rise above the world of sense through the mere might of speculation.”
“… a human being can no more become richer in insight from mere ideas than a merchant could in resources if he wanted to improve his financial state by adding a few zeros to his cash balance.”
“If we survey the cognitions of our understanding in their entire range, then we find that what reason quite uniquely prescribes and seeks to bring about concerning it is the systematic in cognition, i.e., its interconnection based on one principle.”
“… all human cognition begins with intuitions, goes from there to concepts, and ends with ideas… All of our cognition is in the end related to possible intuitions: for through these alone is an object given…”
“… it is always and without any doubt useful to grant reason full freedom in its search as well as its examination, so that it can take care of its own interest without hindrance, which is promoted just as much by setting limits to its insights as by expanding them, and which always suffers if foreign hands intervene to lead it forcibly to aims contrary to its natural path.”
“… skepticism is a resting place for human reason, which can reflect upon its dogmatic peregrination and make a survey of the region in which it finds itself in order to be able to choose its path in the future with greater certainty, but it is not a dwelling-place for permanent residence…”
“Our reason is not like an indeterminably extended plane, the limits of which one can cognize only in general, but must rather be compared with a sphere, the radius of which can be found out from the curvature of an arc on its surface (from the nature of synthetic a priori propositions), from which its content and its boundary can also be ascertained with certainty. Outside this sphere (field of experience) nothing is an object for it…”
“Reason is driven by a propensity of its nature to go beyond its use in experience, to venture to the outermost bounds of all cognition by means of mere ideas in a pure use, and to find peace only in the completion of its circle in a self-subsisting systematic whole.”

14. Alexis de Tocqueville – born 1805

“Little by little, enlightenment spreads; the taste of literature and the arts reawakens; then the mind becomes an element of success; knowledge is a means of government; intelligence, a social force…”
“… the independence of mind that equality suggests is never so great and never appears so excessive as at the moment when equality begins to become established and during the painful work that establishes it. So you must carefully distinguish the type of intellectual liberty that equality can provide, from the anarchy that revolution brings.”
“It is true that every man who receives an opinion on the word of others puts his mind into slavery; but it is a salutary servitude that allows making a good use of liberty.”
“I see very clearly in equality two tendencies: one that leads the mind of each man toward new thoughts and the other that readily reduces him to thinking no more.”
“An instinctive tendency raises the human mind in vain toward the highest spheres of intelligence; interest leads it back towards the middle ones. That is where it puts forth its strength and restless activity, and brings forth miracles.”

15. John Stuart Mill – born 1806

“… human liberty… comprises, first… demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feelings; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much important as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it.”
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, then he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
“Judgment is given to men that they may use it.”
“… mental development is cramped, and… reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought…?”
“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.”
“Never when controversy avoided the subjects which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm, was the mind of a people stirred up from its foundations, and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of thinking beings.”
“If the cultivation of the understanding consists in one thing more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of one’s own opinions.”
“… culture without freedom never made a large and liberal mind…”
“… there are few mental attributes more rare than that judicial faculty which can sit in intelligent judgment between two sides of a question…”
“… in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself.”
“The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used.”
“He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.”
“… the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of…”
“It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth… that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation… whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it is called… it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings.”
“.. a person’s taste is as much of his own particular concern as his opinion or his purse.”

16. Karl Marx – born 1818

“The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”

17. Friedrich A. Hayek – born 1899

“Because we are more aware that our advances in the intellectual sphere often spring from the unforeseen and undesigned, we tend to overstress the importance of freedom in this field and to ignore the importance of the freedom of doing things.”
“The use of reason aims at control and predictability. But the process of the advance of reason rests on freedom and the unpredictability of human action… for advance to take place, the social process from which the growth of reason emerges must remain free from its control.”
“Freedom of action, even in humble things, is as important as freedom of thought.”
“Like all other values, our morals are not a product but a presupposition of reason, part of the ends which the instrument of our intellect has been developed to serve.”
“Nowhere is freedom more important than where our ignorance is greatest – at the boundaries of knowledge…”

18. Bertrand de Jouvenel – born 1903

“But in proportion as the impossible of yesterday becomes the possible of today, the mind loses its sense of the distinction between dream and wish.”
“It is liberty of opinion which animates what is called the dialectic of democracy. Out of the free clash of opinions a majority view emerges and commands.”

Final Thoughts

Looking at this remarkable collection of wisdom spanning over 2,500 years, what strikes me most is the persistent tension between individual autonomy and the forces that would constrain it. From Sun Tzu’s strategic mind that “imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him” to Mill’s passionate defense of intellectual freedom, these thinkers grapple with humanity’s most fundamental challenge: how to cultivate and preserve the independence of thought that makes us truly human.

The evolution of these ideas reveals fascinating patterns. Early philosophers like Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius focused on reason as the path to autonomy—the disciplined mind that could rise above passion and circumstance. The Enlightenment thinkers, particularly Descartes and Kant, took this further, establishing reason as not just a tool but the very foundation of human dignity and freedom. Yet later voices like Pascal and Hume reminded us of reason’s limits, acknowledging the role of imagination, emotion, and experience in shaping our understanding. This dialectic between rationalism and empiricism, between the sovereignty of reason and the recognition of its boundaries, runs like a golden thread through the entire collection.

What remains most relevant today is the unanimous agreement that autonomy requires active cultivation. Whether through Miyamoto Musashi’s warrior discipline, Kant’s courage to use one’s own understanding, or Mill’s warning against the “ape-like faculty of imitation,” these thinkers understood that intellectual freedom isn’t our default state—it must be won and defended against the constant pressures of conformity, passion, and power. In our age of algorithmic influence and information overload, their collective wisdom feels both timeless and urgently contemporary. The mind that can truly think for itself remains, as it has always been, humanity’s most precious and endangered resource.

Thanks for reading!