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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"Sometimes I think I was more in control of my life years and years ago, and yet one should make progress; one should learn more every year and become…well, if not happier, then calmer and more able to handle your problems. But I’m not. Sometimes I just seem to make more problems for myself. I do. It makes me feel I haven’t grown up as much as I should have by now."
"In boxing, if you think you will lose... you're already halfway there."
"It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Think: what do you work at?"
"Where is peace to be found? The answer is surprising but clear. In weakness. Why there? Because in our weakness, our familiar ways of controlling and manipulating our world are being stripped away, and we are forced to let go from doing much, thinking much, and relying on our self-sufficiency. Right there where we are most vulnerable, the peace that is not of this world is mysteriously hidden."
"Although we tend to think about saints as holy and pious, and picture them with halos above their heads and ecstatic gazes, true saints are much more accessible. They are men and women like us, who live ordinary lives and struggle with ordinary problems. What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on God and God's people."
"Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness."
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."
"I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt."
"All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level."
"Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility."
"Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer."
"Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine."
"When I think about why I would be a writer, why I should continue to be a writer, it seems to me one of the few things you can dowhere you're never bored."
"Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!"
"I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book. . . . I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right."
"I think it's one of the nicest privileges as an actor is to know that you can move people in one moment, make them think about their lives, or make them laugh or make them cry or make them understand something. Or just make them feel something because I think so many of us, including myself, spend too much time not feeling enough, you know?"
"Now and then when I get an idea for a picture, I think, how ordinary. Why paint that old rock? Why not go for a walk instead? But then I realise that to someone else it may not seem so ordinary."
"Legalizing marijuana would make a lot of sense, I don't think there's a single case of marijuana overdose on record and tens of millions of users. It's much less dangerous than alcohol, for example."
"I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom."
"In Western Europe, Turkey is regarded as uncivilized, so they can't come in into the European Union until they're civilized. I think it's the other way around. If you could achieve the level of civilization of, say, Turkish intelectuals, it would be quite an achievement."
