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.
"In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn't the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides."
"I love you," I say. I said that once, before I went to Erudite headquarters, but he was asleep then. I don't know why I didn't say it when he could hear it. Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion. Or afraid that I did not know what it was to love someone. But now I think the scary thing was not saying it before it was too late. Not saying it before it was almost too late for me."
"Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind."
"My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there."
"Do my movement and my thinking have an intimate connection? First of all, I don't think my body doesn't think."
"Sometimes thinking too much can destroy your momentum."
"Every time I start thinking the world is all bad, then I start seeing people out there having a good time on motorcycles. It makes me take another look."
"Its OK to be weird. And maybe your weird is my normal. Whos to say? I think its an attitude."
"Take most people, they are crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, they are always talking about have many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that is even newer. I do not even like old cars. . . . I'd rather have a horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake."
"I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person."
"I can't control what people think. They know who I am."
"But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?"
"My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor."
"They want you to believe the Sun is hot. I urge you to ask yourself 'Have they ever touched it? Think about it."
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read."
"I named my new son James Joseph Brown II. I think he's going to be a lot better than I was."
"Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good."
"It's a funny thing... but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want."
"There is an art of seeing things as they are: without naming, without being caught in a network of words, without thinking interfering with perception."
"Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought."
