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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"The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear."
"Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority."
"Pain happens, but suffering is optional. When pain comes, make use of the experience, but do not wallow in it. When you accidentally place your finger in a flame, it is supposed to hurt just long enough for you to pull it out. If you think there is value in keeping it there, you will be a crispy critter. Pain is a minor element of life, unless you are indulging it. Then it becomes suffering. Get the message and then get on with your life, which is far more about joy than sorrow."
"I'm always happy when I'm surrounded by water, I think I'm a Mermaid or I was a mermaid. The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective… it humbles you and makes you feel almost like you’ve been baptized. I feel born again when I get out of the ocean."
"The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I'll never be hands-on on anything except software."
"Think of business as a good game. Lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money."
"Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It's basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it's wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore."
"I really do think cancer will largely be a solved problem. I think most of the infectious diseases like malaria - our foundation is very involved - once we're finishing polio eradication, then starting up this malaria eradication, and getting that done as fast as we can."
"As we get robots becoming more sophisticated, I think we should worry sooner rather than later on how much they could take over, but I think it'll mostly be a positive thing. In terms of deadlines it won't be any worse than nuclear weapons."
"Bioterrorism is like earthquakes, you should think in order of magnitudes. If you can kill 10 people that's a one, 100 people that's a two... Bioterrorism is the thing that can give you not just sixes, but sevens, eights and nines."
"People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us. I think it's a healthy sign that there are demonstrators in the streets. They are raising the question of 'is the rich world giving back enough?'"
"Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they're rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things."
"I think there will be PCs at every price point."
"I think midlife crisis is just a point where people's careers have reached some plateau and they have to reflect on their personal relationships."
"I think there's only so many people that can take care of themselves, and can take care of other people. And the rest of the people … they're useful in terms of compost for the whole planet, you know."
"You curate information that you want to receive. It's a lot different because I'm not asking you if it's okay, I'm just saying I'm following your updates. That's why I don't think of Twitter as a social network."
"We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own."
"I think certain people are the way they are for certain reasons that we can't necessarily judge without knowing."
"We weren’t trying to strike it rich with Firefox. It’s open source and it’s free. We weren’t trying to take over the world; we had kind of modest goals, and it was OK if it failed. We were a lot freer to make risky decisions. If you can afford to do things that way, it’s just so much better. You’re not thinking about venture capitalists or marketing or sales. Just product and users, all day every day."
"There's a lot of false prophets around and that's the trouble. People say they think they know what's right and other people get people to follow them because they have a certain type of charisma, and there's always people willing to take over. People want a leader. And there will be more and more of them."
