Thinking quotes
95.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside thinking — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations."
"A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view."
"Well, now If little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you Little by little If suddenly you forget me Do not look for me For I shall already have forgotten you If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots Remember That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms And my roots will set off to seek another land"
"It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you’re doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It’s what you think of it. Two people may in the same place doing the same thing, and yet one may be miserable and the other happy. Why? Because of a different mental attitude."
"Nothing less will shake a man — or at any rate a man like me — out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself."
"I think same sex couples should be able to get married."
"One way to become aware many times during the day is to take a conscious breath. Doing so breaks the stream of thinking."
"You don't think you'll live past it and you don't really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that's still alive wakes up one day and takes over again."
"Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming."
"The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised litterati...when their very medium, the very essence of their work, the application of word to thing goes rotten, i.e. becomes slushy and inexact, or excessive or bloated, the whole machinery of social and of individual thought and order goes to pot."
"Crossrail is a prime example of infrastructure. It is a rather deadly word, but I think it is exciting stuff, the civil engineering which makes Britain tick - the bridges, tunnels, power and water networks, which bind us together."
"Consciousness succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer and wiser than our conscious thinking."
"Every New Year's Eve, I have a pact to do something I never thought I'd do. So I created this list. You have to free your mind to do things you wouldn't think of doing. Don't ever say no."
"A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions."
"Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do."
"The world we think we see is only a view, a collective description of the world that we create through our belief systems. Accepting this fact seems to be one of the most empowering things one can do."
"I like to think of poetry as statements made on the way to the grave."
"Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others."
"Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you."
"Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it."
