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.
"I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it's especially egregious when citizens like me, who point out abuses in their country, are referred to as 'do-gooders.' This is how a phrase that can be used to stop an argument dead becomes part of common usage."
"I think that superhero comics in particular are really useful for talking about big emotions and feelings, and personifying and concretizing symbols."
"I couldn't think of one clever way to stop this guy, so I just trusted to mindless violence."
"Sometimes... sometimes I think the Asylum is a head. We're inside a huge head that dreams us all into being. Perhaps it's your head, Batman. Arkham is a looking glass... and we are you."
"When you learn to make everybody happy, you will possess the golden secret of how to milk the contented voters. But do it in such a way that they won't think you want them to vote for you just because you need the money. They need the money, and besides, they can think up other reasons if they try."
"I think I'm better than I was in my younger days, because I'm exploring deep lyrical material, and I've been sober for a while now."
"I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down."
"I am not an exponent of expressionism. I don't know exactly what that means, but I don't like the sound of it. I dislike cults and isms. I want to paint in terms of my own thinking and feeling."
"I took back a barrel of bones to New York. They were my symbols of the desert, but nothing more. I haven't seen enough to think of any other symbolism. The skulls were there and I could say something with them."
"Is there not a way by which the man who can think can be enabled to have time to think?"
"You, who can't do anything, think you can bring off something like that? How can you even dare to think about it? If you were capable of it, you certainly wouldn't be in need of it."
"The humiliation I go through/when I think of my past/can only be described as grace./We are created by being destroyed."
"I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I'm not going."
"I think the use of language is a very important means by which this species, because of its biological nature, creates a kind of social space, to place itself in interactions with other people. It doesn't have much to do with communication in a narrow sense; that is, it doesn't involve transmission of information. There is much information transmitted but it is not the content of what is said that is transmitted."
"I think this country and the world would be far better off if the US is not an outlaw state."
"Let's imagine again an observer looking at us without any preconceptions. I think he would be struck by the fact that although human beings have the capacity to develop scientific knowledge, it must be a very limited capacity because it is only done in very narrow and specific domains."
"Nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an innocent victim only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret."
"A lot of association on the internet is highly constructive. There are people interacting, interchanging ideas, making plans, coordinating activities; take any of the popular movements, a lot of the organization is through the internet. We want to have a demonstration or we want to have a meeting, its done through the internet. I think that's all to the good."
"If you listen to the talk shows, which are rabid right-wing, and very interesting, an important fact about the United States, they reach a huge audience. And they're very uniform. So right wing, I don't think you can even find an analog in your, but they reach a mass audience, and their view is that the corporations are liberal. Their appeal to the population is, "the country is run by liberals, they own the corporations, they run the government, they own the media, and they don't care about us ordinary people.""
"And if you look at all this academic work in the conferences and so on there's a constant theme that terrorism is extremely hard to define and we therefore have to have a deep thinking about it. And the reason it's hard to define is quite simple. It's hard to find a definition that includes what they do to us but excludes what we do to them. That's quite difficult. So it takes a global war on terrorism."
