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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"Remember, the thoughts that you think and the statements you make regarding yourself determine your mental attitude. If you have a worthwhile objective, find the one reason why you can achieve it rather than hundreds of reasons why you can't."
"A man is as big as the measure of his thinking."
"Arrogance is, as it were, a solicitation on the part of one seeking honor for followers, whom he thinks he is entitled to treat with contempt."
"What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing"
"The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passions are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine."
"THE MAGIC AND THE DANGER OF FICTION IS THIS: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about, worry about, laugh with, and cry for people who do not, outside of the story, exist. There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong."
"I do not think that this [the universe] can be explained only by natural causes, and are forced to impute to the wisdom and ingenuity of an intelligent."
"I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism."
"But I don't think we'll go there until we go back to the moon and develop a technology base for living and working and transporting ourselves through space."
"There are two obstacles to enlightenment: 1. Thinking you know. 2 Thinking you don't know."
"Which do you think is more my friend, the water in the four great oceans or the tears that you have shed on this long way of taking birth again and again?"
"We have the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast. But in the name of freedom, people have done a lot of damage. I think we have to build a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast in order to counterbalance. Because liberty without responsibility is not true liberty. We are not free to destroy."
"To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark - in a way that you think is important and lasting - that's a life well-lived."
"Well, possibly," I said, feeling my lips twitch again. "But maybe first you would tell us why you chose to manifest yourself in the form of Shirley Temple as last seen on the 'Good Ship Lollipop'?" The demon twirled around, its big pink sash fluttering as it smoothed down its dress and frilly little petticoat. "My grotesque form isn't making you sick with fright?" We both shook our heads, Noelle with a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. "Shirley Temple at her pinnacle was frightening," I finally told it, "but not in the sense I think you mean."
"Prizes do not mean anything to me. I think it is more important to make a child aware of the existence of a weird creature like a water spider that breathes through its backside."
"I think the best way to waste time is to try to save time."
"Personally, when it comes to rights, I think one of two things is true. I think either we have unlimited rights, or we have no rights at all. Personally I lean towards unlimited rights, I feel for instance I have the right to do anything I please, BUT! If I do something you don't like I think you have the right to kill me."
"I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist."
"People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy."
"Smoking marijuana - or most everybody who smokes marijuana deals it in small amounts to their friends, innocently enough. I think it's innocently enough."
