quotations about thinking
We never think entirely alone; we think in company, in a vast collaboration; we work with the workers of the past and of the present.
ANTONIN SERTILLANGES
The Intellectual Life
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
Individuality in opinion, or, what is more, in thinking, is simply one with thinking at all; for he who thinks thereby looks at the thing or the fact itself and takes its measure by observation directly, not content with the measures of others.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
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
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
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
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
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
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
OSCAR WILDE
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
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
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
ALFRED KORZYBSKI
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes