Thinking quotes
95.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside thinking — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I think you should read everything you can. In my case, by the age of 10, I'd read every book in the Omaha public library about investing, some twice. You need to fill your mind with various competing thoughts and decide which make sense."
"No one should think or say anything of another which he would not wish thought or said of himself."
"They can do all because they think they can."
"When people tell me I am better than I think I am I feel good about myself."
"I don't care if you hate me or love me, as long as I make you think."
"Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions."
"I think my most beautiful smile or laugh emerges when I'm happy."
"Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."
"There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless."
"Every man can educate himself. It's shameful to put one's mind into the hands of those whom you wouldn't entrust with your money. Dare to think for yourself."
"I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened."
"When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they're really thinking about their own affairs."
"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us."
"Showing weakness will encourage your opponents. It inspires them. It encourages them to hit harder. To come faster. But when you don't show any fear, or when you don't show any hurt, you have the opportunity to discourage your opponent. You discourage your enemies. The bottom line is, if you think properly, you don't even have to think about all of that. All you have to think about is that guy across from me is human, and so am I. And he'll never out-work me. He'll never out-think me. And if you can't out-work me, and you can't out-think me, you'll never beat me."
"Christ says, 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you....Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself: my own will shall become yours."
"I think in life everyone needs to be broken in some way."
"I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget."
"Everything is ecstasy inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind [it] is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever."
"As for the primitive, I hark back to it because we are still very primitive. How many thousands of years of culture, think you, have rubbed and polished at our raw edges? One probably; at the best, no more than two. And that takes us back to screaming savagery, when, gross of body and deed, we drank blood from the skulls of our enemies, and hailed as highest paradise the orgies and carnage of Valhalla."
"I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking."
