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thinking quotes

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“Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.” Confucius, Analects
“Thinking is the hardest work any one can do—which is probably the reason why we have so few thinkers.” Henry Ford, My Life and Work
“My thought is me: that’s why I can’t stop. I exist because I think... and I can’t stop myself from thinking. At this very moment—it’s frightful—if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“Stop thinking, and end your problems.” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“If you’re for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.” Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“He who thinks little, errs much.” Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
“there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
“Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.” Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
“'I don't think—' 'Then you shouldn't talk'” Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
“True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” Plato, The Republic
“My God, there's absolutely nothing tenth-rate about you, and yet you're up to your neck at this minute in tenth-rate thinking.” J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
“They give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results.” John Dewey, Democracy and Education
“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.” Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
“To talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
“O, teach me how I should forget to think!” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.” J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.” Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“You don't have to think too hard when you talk to a teacher.” J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“what we dwell on is who we become—as a woman thinks, so she is.” Oprah Winfrey, What I Know For Sure
“To determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
“I can think. I can wait. I can fast.” Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.” Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
“as long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking” Virginia Woolf, Orlando
“Writing is good, thinking is better.” Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“When you step outside of school and have to teach yourself about life, you develop a different relationship to information. I’ve never been a purely linear thinker.” JAY-Z, Decoded
“But in this retirement of the mind from the senses, it often retains a yet more loose and incoherent manner of thinking, which we call dreaming.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
“I’m one of those people who doesn’t really know what he thinks until he writes it down” Stephen King, 11/22/63
“It seemed better to delay thinking...” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
“I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think about nothing else.” Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
“There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?” Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
“Thinking is common to all.” Heraclitus, On Nature
“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them—by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.” Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“The truth is... you think what people want you to think.” Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted
“Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in association with others is as much a social mode of behavior as is the most overt cooperative or hostile act.” John Dewey, Democracy and Education
“It was a lonely life to lead, for I had nothing to think of, having been made such a little while before.” L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
“God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.” Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
“You see, I've got this real moron thing I do, it's called 'thinking.' And I guess I'm not a very good American, because I like to form my own opinions; I don't just roll over when I'm told.” George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty
“I think I am, therefore, I am. I think.” George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty
“you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day.” Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Related topics

knowledge work empathy learning action talking writing education God women existence waiting school labour danger effort subjectivity misunderstanding error happiness

Related authors

Jean-Paul Sartre (1)
J. D. Salinger (3)
Hermann Hesse (3)
John Dewey (2)
William Shakespeare (2)
George Carlin (2)
Confucius (1)
Leonardo da Vinci (1)
Lao Tzu (1)
John Locke (1)
Henry Ford (1)
Mark Twain (1)
Maya Angelou (1)
Charles Bukowski (1)
Jane Austen (1)
Emma Goldman (1)
Heraclitus (1)
Ayn Rand (1)
Plato (1)
Chuck Palahniuk (1)

Related sources

Siddhartha (3)
The Catcher in the Rye (2)
Democracy and Education (2)
Napalm & Silly Putty (2)
Franny and Zooey (1)
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1)
Analects (1)
My Life and Work (1)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1)
Fahrenheit 451 (1)
Tao Te Ching (1)
On Nature (1)
Hamlet (1)
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1)
Romeo and Juliet (1)
The Republic (1)
Nausea (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
Pride and Prejudice (1)