Quote collection

Thinking Quotes — page 776 of 4756

William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
Happy

“I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.”

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
Sad

“A fellow gets to thinking. About all the sorrow and afflictions in this world; how it's liable to strike anywhere, like lightning.”

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
Sad

“And when I think about that, I think that if nothing but being married will help a man, he's durn nigh hopeless.”

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
Angry

“Sometimes I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.”

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
Sad

“It used to be I thought of death as a man something like Grandfather a friend of his a kind of private and particular friend like we used to think of Grandfather's desk not to touch it not even to talk loud in the room where it was.”

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William George Jordan Author, Speaker
Angry

“He who thinks all mankind is vile is a pessimist who mistakes his introspection for observation; he looks into his own heart and thinks he sees the world.”

William Goldman Screenwriter, Novelist
Confident

“One of the things that happens to careers out here is that people destroy themselves because they begin to think they're wonderful. They begin to think they know what they're doing, and the minute that happens, it's over.”

William Goldman Screenwriter, Novelist
Sad

“I guess the most amazing thing about crying though is that when you're in it, you think it'll go on forever but it never really lasts half what you think. Not in terms of real time. In terms of real emotions, it's worse than you think, but not by the clock.”

William Goldman Screenwriter, Novelist
Philosophical

“You think this is a trap then?" the Count asked. "I always think everything is a trap until proven otherwise," the Prince answered. "Which is why I'm still alive.”

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William Goldman Screenwriter, Novelist
Funny

“Liar! Liar!" shrieked suddenly from the now open trap door. Miracle Max whirled. "Back, Witch--" he commanded. "I'm not a witch, I'm your wife--" she was advancing on him now, an ancient tiny fury--"and after what you've just done I don't think I want to be that any more--”

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William James Philosopher, Psychologist
Wise

“My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.”

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William James Philosopher, Psychologist
Philosophical

“The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.”

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William James Philosopher, Psychologist
Philosophical

“... A rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those ... truths were really there, would be an irrational rule.”

William James Philosopher, Psychologist
Philosophical

“Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.”

William James Philosopher, Psychologist
Thoughtful

“The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.”

William James Philosopher, Psychologist
Philosophical

“The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.”

William James Philosopher, Psychologist
Philosophical

“In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world because we believe our PERCEPTS are possessed by us in common”

William James Philosopher, Psychologist
Philosophical

“To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.”

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William James Philosopher, Psychologist
Philosophical

“Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass from one concrete object to its habitual concrete successor far more uniformly than is the case with us. In other words, their associations of ideas are almost exclusively by contiguity. So far, however, as any brute might think by abstract characters instead of by association of con cretes, he would have to be admitted to be a reasoner in the true human sense. How far this may take place is quite uncertain.”