Thinking Quotes
1. The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
2. Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.
3. Think before you speak. Read before you think.
4. The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
5. Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
6. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
7. We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.
8. I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
9. The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
10. The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
11. All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
12. 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.
13. Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.
14. Poirot,” I said. “I have been thinking.”
“An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.
15. Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
16. Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.
17. Stop thinking, and end your problems.
18. Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.
19. To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.
20. Your mind is working at its best when you’re being paranoid.
You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation
at high speed with total clarity.
21. The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
22. If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.
23. A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
24. Whoever controls the media, controls the mind
25. The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no?
Doesn’t that make life a story?
26. Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)
27. Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.
28. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
29. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
30. Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.
31. The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. A second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. A first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
32. If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.
33. People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
34. We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them
35. Each thinking mind is a political mind.
36. Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
37. In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.
38. You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.
39. Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it’s not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can’t be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.
40. Thinking about something is like picking up a stone when taking a walk, either while skipping rocks on the beach, for example, or looking for a way to shatter the glass doors of a museum. When you think about something, it adds a bit of weight to your walk, and as you think about more and more things you are liable to feel heavier and heavier, until you are so burdened you cannot take any further steps, and can only sit and stare at the gentle movements of the ocean waves or security guards, thinking too hard bout too many things to do anything else.
41. Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.
42. Why should things be easy to understand?
43. Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
44. The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live –moreover, the only one.
45. I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.
46. I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that’s alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.
47. Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.
48. Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally.
49. Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.
50. No brain at all, some of them [people], only grey fluff that’s blown into their heads by mistake, and they don’t Think.
51. The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind
about nothing — to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.
52. As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.
53. People will walk in and walk out of your life, but the one whose footstep made a long lasting impression is the one you should never allow to walk out.
54. If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?
55. The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.
56. How ghastly for her, people actually thinking, with their brains, and right next door. Oh, the travesty of it all.
57. Are you in great physical pain, or is that your thinking expression?
58. Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience – waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.
59. When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.
60. A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.
