Thinking Quotes

Quotes About Thinking From Million Quotes

 

Think any way you please, but know why. - Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)


The mind is what it thinks. To make it true, think true. - Nisargadatta Maharaj


No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. - Voltaire


Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. - Edmund Burke


Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain. - Carl G. Jung


Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. - Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun


No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head. - Terry Josephson


You and I are not what we eat; we are what we think. - Walter Anderson, The Confidence Course, 1997


Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again? - Winnie the Pooh


People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. - Søren Kierkegaard


Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. - John F. Kennedy


The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds. - Will Durant


Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in. - Alan Alda


I like to think of thoughts as living blossoms borne by the human tree. - James Douglas


The forceps of our minds are clumsy things and crush the truth a little in the course of taking hold of it. - H.G. Wells


Our minds are lazier than our bodies. - François VI de la Rochefoucault


Invest a few moments in thinking. It will pay good interest. - Author Unknown


Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory. - G. Behn


Thinking is like loving and dying. Each of us must do it for himself. - Josiah Royce


It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. - Luther Burbank


Physiological response to thinking and to pain is the same; and man is not given to hurting himself. - Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)


We spend our days in deliberating, and we end them without coming to any resolve. - L'Estrange, quoted in Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin M. Ballou, 1886


Our job is not to make up anybody's mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of the decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking. - Author Unknown


Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry. - Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923


The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés. - H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1925





...the thoughtful excitement of lonely rambles, of gardening, and of other like occupations, where the mind has leisure to must during the healthful activity of the body, with the fresh and wakeful breezes blowing round it... - Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Belief is when someone else does the thinking. - Buckminster Fuller, 1972




Irons rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. - Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, 1508


A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking. - Ralph Waldo Emerson


Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody. - Stanislaw Lec, Unkempt Thoughts, 1962


One morning, when it must be acknowledged that Helen had been sitting too long in the same position with her head leaning on her hand, Miss Clarendon, in her abrupt voice, asked, "How much longer, Helen, do you intend to sit there, doing only what is the worst thing in the world for you—thinking?"
Helen started, and said she feared she had been sitting too long idle. - Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849), Helen, 1834


As prosperity is promoted, thinking is demoted. - Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)


Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all. - G.C. Lichtenberg


The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking. - Albert Einstein


Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think. - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


At a certain age some people's minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat. - William Lyon Phelps


All sorts of reflections of this nature passed through my mind—for as I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me... - H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines


Thoughts are like an open ocean, they can either move you forward within its waves, or sink you under deep into its abyss. - Anthony Liccione


It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else. - Stanley Kubrick


We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap. - Anthony Hopkins


One cannot think crooked and walk straight. - Author Unknown


Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel. - Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


No amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life with its eyes shut is a kind of wild insanity. - Henry Van Dyke


Tell your friends not to think aloud
Until they swallow.
- Nickelback, "Leader of Men," The State


Believing is easier than thinking. Hence so many more believers than thinkers. - Bruce Calvert


A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor. - Victor Hugo


Practical gentlemen hate uncertainty, balancing of probabilities, skepticism or approximation. They have a number of bitterly satirical comments on persons whose minds are so open that their brains fall out. They are bent on getting to a conclusion. - Max Radin, 1937


Sometimes I think and other times I am. - Paul Valéry, Variété: Cantiques spirituels, 1924


Few minds wear out; more rust out. - Christian N. Bovee


From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging.
- John Milton





We use 10% of our brains. Imagine how much we could accomplish if we used the other 60%. - Ellen Degeneres


A just thinker will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.... We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Worship," The Conduct of Life, 1860


Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information. - John Erskine


Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good. - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche


If a man's stomach has been filled by eating greens and other vegetables, although the most precious dainties with exquisite tastes should be given him, he cannot swallow them, he must first get rid of a few portions of the greens; so in reading, the same is true of the mixed thoughts which distract the mind, which are about the dusty affairs of a vulgar world. - Robert Morrison, quoted in The Middle Kingdom by Samuel Wells Williams


Men can live without air a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months — and without a new thought for years on end. - Kent Ruth


The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have. - John Locke, 16 May 1699


Men who borrow their opinions can never repay their debts. - George Savile, Marquess de Halifax, Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections


A lawyer's brief will be brief, before a freethinker thinks freely. - Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough. - Confucius, Analects


Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking. - Steve Allen


What luck for rulers, that men do not think. - Adolph Hitler


Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is absurd. - Voltaire, 1767


Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. - Bertrand Russell


[Thinking is] what a great many people think they are doing when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. - William James


For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while. - Luther Burbank


How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. - Niels Bohr


You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind. - Author Unknown


He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. - William Drummond, Academical Questions


Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to. - Howard Mumford Jones