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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"Two things, generally, for me, is what life is about. And they're not funny. Living in the moment, is one. And No. 2 is getting out of yourself and helping other people. Because all of my suffering stems from thinking from myself."
"But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got."
"Almost everything I've done, I've done through my own creativity. I don't think I ever had to listen to anyone else to learn how to play drums. I wish I could say that for about ten thousand other drummers."
"I can think of a lot better things to do with my hands than to cut them up on the rim of a drum."
"Friends come in herds and they leave in herds. Hollywood loves an adventure, but you have to hit bottom. Then they love to save you and be a part of it. Or think they're a part of it."
"Thinking that what you want equals what's best for you is a dead end."
"Do you know anyone who hasn't changed his mind? This door was a tree, then it will be firewood for someone, then it will return to air and earth. We're all like that, constantly changing. It's simply honest to report that you've changed your mind when you have. When you're afraid of what people will think if you speak honestly, that's where you become confused."
"Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It's tough to do that when we're terrified about what people might see or think."
"The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king."
"We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin."
"The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination."
"We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English."
"I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back."
"I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind."
"Everything has changed, except our way of thinking."
"Smoke like a chimney, work like a horse, eat without thinking, go for a walk only in really pleasant company."
"The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level at which we have created them.... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive."
"Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion."
"Renunciation of thinking is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy."
"I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now - no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore."
