"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
Read quote
8 likes
Thinking quotes
Thinking
95.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Thinking
Browse quotes that often appear alongside thinking — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Thinking quotes (page 318 of 4756)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I think something will soon have to be done to protect people from hacking and blogging and lying and spreading rumors and chasing you down the street. Lives are wrecked that way."
Read quote
8 likes
"Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions. Notice what you notice. Observe what's vivid. Catch yourself thinking. Vividness is self-selecting. And remember the future."
Read quote
8 likes
"So the problem for the poetic artist or the photographer is the common problem of continuous attentiveness, continuous attempts to notice what he is noticing, continuous alertness to catch himself thinking or seeing, devotional attentiveness to the world he's moving through."
Read quote
8 likes
"I don’t think there’s any problem with advancing consciousness and becoming more and more aware of the struggle, not with the world, not to convince other people to do anything. The really interesting think is the struggle with the self, and the relation with the self, and there is no end to the improvement that can be done there, the discoveries that can be made."
Read quote
8 likes
"I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts."
Read quote
8 likes
"I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks... or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries. Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each."
Read quote
8 likes
"Liberal progressivism evolved after our Constitution. It has repeatedly failed all over the world so why do we think it could be successful here in the United States of America?"
Read quote
8 likes
"I can be very polite, and I think that people can confuse that for all sorts of things... But I'll take that over people assuming that I'm smart just because I'm short and rude."
Read quote
8 likes
"I do not claim to have attained optimum emotional well-being. Actually, I think that may be a lifetime goal. For me it’s an ongoing process that requires awareness, knowledge, and practice. I do know what good emotional health feels like, and that motivates me to keep at the practice."
Read quote
8 likes
"The interviewer should just tell me the words he wants me to say and I’ll repeat them after him. I think that would be so great because I’m so empty I just can’t think of anything to say."
Read quote
8 likes
"I think a lot of people do big movies not because they are talented artists but because they can function in the circumstances."
Read quote
8 likes
"One of the things I was taught in law school is that I'd never be able to think the same again - that being a lawyer is something that's part of who I am as an individual now."
Read quote
8 likes
"The summer has seized you, as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw lemons as large as your desk-side globe-that miniature map of the world-and I could mention, too, the market stalls of mushrooms and garlic bugs all engorged. Or I even think of the orchard next door, where the berries are done and the apples are beginning to swell. And once, with our first backyard,I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans we couldn't eat."
Read quote
8 likes
"The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she's proud of the fact that her food is f---ing bad for you. If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it's OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks."
Read quote
8 likes
"I've been very careful about what I say yes to and what I say no to. And I think seriously always about... this may be a good idea right now or it may be a lot of money right now, but will it be good for me five years from now? Will it be fun? Will it make me hate myself? I think about all of those things."
Read quote
8 likes
"I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry. ... No, no!"
Read quote
8 likes
"You're beautiful, but you're empty...One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass, since she's the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose."
Read quote
8 likes
"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me."
Read quote
8 likes
"I think the hardest thing is losing weight. That's the hardest thing more than anything else."
Read quote
8 likes