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 have always secretly felt that what mankind should be in an ideal sense is that mixture of people and races. I really believe in it. I don't think there is anything sacred in the integrity of race, white or black."
"We spend the early years feeding our brains with information and the latter half trying not to think about it all."
"An entertainer is someone who pleases others, and an artist tries to please himself. An artist is on a journey: they don't know where they're going, what is going to happen, but they know they are not there yet, and there is some continuity and growth. I think of myself as an entertainer: I'm a performing entertainer, I'm a stand-up comic. But there's an artist at work here, too. One who interprets his world through his own filter."
"If drumsticks are for playing drums, you would think that breadsticks would be for playing bread, wouldn't you? "Would you like some breadsticks?" "No, thank you, I don't play bread. I play drums. Perhaps I'll have a drum roll.""
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
"One of my goals is to have a base near mainland China. I think Hong Kong would be a good match for me. I like being in Hong Kong."
"I think this would be a good time for a beer."
"I think the major good idea in Unix was its clean and simple interface: open, close, read, and write."
"Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live."
"In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are."
"We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means."
"But I also think that once you've found stuff that works, stop reading forums, stop reading reviews and just get out there and play."
"Overreaction is one of the things that congress specializes in. I can't think of anything congress does better than overreact."
"To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning."
"An educated person, I think, is one who not only knows a lot, but knows how to do a lot of things."
"Many persons think that by hoarding money they are gaining safety for themselves. If money is your only hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Without these qualities, money is practically useless. The security even of money depends on knowledge, experience, and ability. If productive ideas are displaced by destructive ideas, economic life suffers."
"I don't talk to everybody, so they don't really know the real me. I don't think anybody will."
"I want to be able to raise my kid. I was totally being a martyr about it at first, thinking I could totally do it on my own, which I did for a while. I've hired a babysitter before, but as for a full-time caregiver... for a control freak like me, it ain't gonna happen!"
"I think someday you're going to be a great writer," he said. "But" he added maliciously, "first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first."
"When we anticipate, we're the happiest. Unless you're on antidepressants. The reason you take antidepressants is because you can't anticipate. You think everything's going to be horrible, so it usually is."
