“Accept only that which stands to your reason. Never accept anything merely because it is preached by some great leader. Test its truth on the touchstone of your intellectual discrimination.”

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 3, “You Are Not Special” (p. 61)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 46

Thus It Is, 1989, p. 164
As of a Trumpet, On Eagle's Wings, Thus It Is

Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 34
Context: Our preceptors were gentlemen as well as scholars. There was not a grain of sentimentalism in the institution; on the other hand, the place was permeated by a profound sense of justice. … An equalitarian and democratic regime must by consequence assume, tacitly or avowedly, that everybody is educable. The theory of our regime was directly contrary to this. Our preceptors did not see that doctrines of equality and democracy had any footing in the premises. They did not pretend to believe that everyone is educable, for they knew, on the contrary, that very few are educable, very few indeed. They saw this as a fact of nature, like the fact that few are six feet tall. … They accepted the fact that there are practicable ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience which nature has opened to some and closed to others.

The Dragon Queen