quotations about thinking
Every man who expresses what he honestly thinks is true is changing the Spirit of the Times. Thinkers help other people to think, for they formulate what others are thinking. No person writes or thinks alone--thought is in the air, but its expression is necessary to create a tangible Spirit of the Times.
ELBERT HUBBARD
Pig-Pen Pete
The habit of thinking gives an inner life, which all that we see animates and embellishes; in this disposition of the soul everything becomes an object of thought; if the young botanist trembles with joy at the sight of a new plant, the moral botanist joys no less to see germinate around him truths with a much superior prize to that of an unknown flower.
BONSTELLEN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Thinking may be said to be the living principle of wisdom.
DEGERANDO
attributed, Day's Collacon
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
HORACE WALPOLE
The Letters of Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Not out of right practice comes right thinking, but out of right thinking comes right practice. It matters enormously what you think. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.
ANNIE BESANT
Daily Meditations on the Path and Its Qualifications
If thou thinkest twice, before thou speakest once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Half the trouble in the world arises because you can't stop people from thinking, and the other half because you can't start them.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
In martial arts, as in life, you quickly learn not to think too much. You have to do. While you're thinking, you open spaces where an opponent can successfully strike at you. The more you think, the more vulnerable you become.
JOSEPH CARDILLO
Be Like Water
All practical men try to bring the world under their hands; all thinkers, under their heads.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
Better to think wrongly with your own head, than to think rightly with the head of another.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.
BUCKMINSTER FULLER
Cosmography
One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
OSCAR WILDE
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
I figure if you think too much about things, life sometimes just passes you by.
DAVID BALDACCI
Split Second
I don't believe in thought. Too much thinking.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
If I could think how these my thoughts to leave,
Or thinking still, my thoughts might have good end:
If rebel sense would reason's law receive;
Or reason foil'd would not in vain contend:
Then might I think what thoughts were best to think:
Then might I wisely swim, or gladly sink.
PHILIP SIDNEY
sonnet
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Though man a thinking being is defined,
Few use the grand prerogative of mind.
How few think justly of the thinking few!
How many never think, who think they do.
JANE TAYLOR
Essays in Rhyme
Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:--for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
"Notes on Hamlet"