Thinking Quotes

Most popular thinking quotes

Thoughts corrupt language, and language can also corrupt thought. - George Orwell quote.
Thoughts corrupt language, and language can also corrupt thought.

language

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched. - George Jean Nathan quote.
No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

aggression anger

You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions. - Elizabeth Gilbert quote.
You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

human nature emotion

Thoughts are often one-sided and untrue. Learn to be mindful of thought instead of being lost in it. - Jack Kornfield quote.
Thoughts are often one-sided and untrue. Learn to be mindful of thought instead of being lost in it.
Jack Kornfield The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology

buddhist mindfulness

"Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Barbara Kingsolver quote.
"Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down."
Thoughts are like lenses through which we look at our world. We all have a tendency to cling to our particular lens and allow it to dictate how we interpret our experiences, even to the point of dictating who we think we are.

human nature

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well. - René Descartes quote.
It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.

mind

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. - William James quote.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

prejudice

I have found power in the mysteries of thought. - Euripides quote.
I have found power in the mysteries of thought.
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. - Confucius quote.
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

learning

Thought is free. - William Shakespeare quote.
Thought is free.
A moment's thinking is an hour in words.

words

What you are thinking, is what you are becoming. - Muhammad Ali quote.
What you are thinking, is what you are becoming.
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action. - Peter Drucker quote.
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

action management

Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment.
Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit—and man is his own gardener. - James Allen quote.
Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit—and man is his own gardener.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. - John Locke quote.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

reading critical thinking

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. - Edmund Burke quote.
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

reading

Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." In light of the Buddha's teaching, you might say, "I think, therefore I am . . . not here." You are lost in your thinking, so you are really not here. For you to truly be here, thinking has to stop. As you are practicing mindfulness of the breath, the object of your attention is simply the breath. - Thích Nhất Hạnh quote.
Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." In light of the Buddha's teaching, you might say, "I think, therefore I am . . . not here." You are lost in your thinking, so you are really not here. For you to truly be here, thinking has to stop. As you are practicing mindfulness of the breath, the object of your attention is simply the breath.

buddhist mindfulness

Not talking, by itself, already can bring a significant degree of peace. If we can also offer ourselves the deeper silence of not thinking, we can find, in that quiet, a wonderful lightness and freedom. - Thích Nhất Hạnh quote.
Not talking, by itself, already can bring a significant degree of peace. If we can also offer ourselves the deeper silence of not thinking, we can find, in that quiet, a wonderful lightness and freedom.

silence buddhist

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
Nothing pains some people more than having to think. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Don't believe everything you think.

beliefs

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking. - A. A. Milne quote.
The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!

action

Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age. - Friedrich Nietzsche quote.
Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age.
A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts.
If I look confused it is because I am thinking. - Samuel Goldwyn quote.
If I look confused it is because I am thinking.
When all think alike, then no one is thinking. - Walter Lippmann quote.
When all think alike, then no one is thinking.
One must learn to think well before learning to think; afterward it proves too difficult. - Anatole France quote.
One must learn to think well before learning to think; afterward it proves too difficult.

critical thinking

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

food for thought

There's times when I just have to quit thinking . . . and the only way I can quit thinking is by shopping. - Tamara Faye LaValley Bakker quote.
There's times when I just have to quit thinking . . . and the only way I can quit thinking is by shopping.

shopping

ECONOMY OF MIND

Thinking gives a lot of pain.
Talking doesn't cost a thing.
Therefore, rest your weary brain
and give your tongue a fling.

talking

I concentrate on
the concentric rings
produced by my pen
in the ink.
The thing that distinguishes
thoughts from things
is that thoughts are harder
to think.
Think before you speak.  Read before you think. - Fran Lebowitz quote.
Think before you speak.  Read before you think.

advisory

The first man who noticed the analogy between a group of seven fishes and a group of seven days made a notable advance in the history of thought. - Alfred North Whitehead quote.
The first man who noticed the analogy between a group of seven fishes and a group of seven days made a notable advance in the history of thought.

analogy

When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do. - Hermann Hesse quote.
When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.

artists death

Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes. - Theodor Reik quote.
Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.

mediocrity artists

A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts. - James Allen quote.
A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

character

A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking. - Martin H. Fischer quote.
A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. - Doris Lessing quote.
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

conformity individuality

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. - Thomas Szasz quote.
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

courage

A man able to think isn't defeated—even when he is defeated. - Milan Kundera quote.
A man able to think isn't defeated—even when he is defeated.

defeat

To have ideas is to gather flowers.  To think is to weave them into garlands. - Madame Swetchine quote.
To have ideas is to gather flowers.  To think is to weave them into garlands.

ideas

Delightful task! To rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot. - James Thomson quote.
Delightful task! To rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot.

ideas

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. - Ralph Waldo Emerson quote.
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

life

Life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings.  It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head. - Mark Twain quote.
Life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings.  It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.

life

Many other animals have feelings.  What distinguishes our species is thought. - Carl Sagan quote.
Many other animals have feelings.  What distinguishes our species is thought.

mankind man the animal

To think is to say no.
Alain The Citizen Against the Powers

saying no

Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation. - E. M. Cioran quote.
Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.

quotations

There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped. - Sherwood Anderson quote.
There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped.
To think and to be fully alive are the same. - Hannah Arendt quote.
To think and to be fully alive are the same.
Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business. - Hannah Arendt quote.
Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business.
Thinking is seeing. - Honoré de Balzac quote.
Thinking is seeing.
The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion—these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work. - Jerome S. Bruner quote.
The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion—these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work.
All power is indeed weak compared with that of the thinker.  He sits upon the throne of his Empire of Thought, mightier far than they who wield material scepters.
In every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world? - Thomas Carlyle quote.
In every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world?
Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her. - Raymond Chandler quote.
Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.
If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all? - Samuel Coleridge quote.
If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
To think is to differ. - Clarence Darrow quote.
To think is to differ.
Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place. - John Dewey quote.
Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.
Thinking is the hardest work in the world; and most of us will go to great lengths to avoid it.
Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry. - Havelock Ellis quote.
Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.  Then all things are at risk. - Ralph Waldo Emerson quote.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.  Then all things are at risk.
What is the hardest task in the world?  To think.
Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action. - Sigmund Freud quote.
Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge it is thinking [that] makes what we read ours.
John Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Thinking is the endeavor to capture reality by the means of ideas. - Jose Ortega y Gasset quote.
Thinking is the endeavor to capture reality by the means of ideas.
Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. - Blaise Pascal quote.
Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
Every man who has lived his life to the full, should, by the time his senior years are reached, have established a reserve inventory of unfinished thinking.
People get wisdom from thinking, not from learning.

wisdom

A king can stand people's fighting, but he can last long if people start thinking. - Will Rogers quote.
A king can stand people's fighting, but he can last long if people start thinking.
Thinking is like loving and dying.  Each of us must do it for himself.
Josiah Royce Impetus: A Review of International Assistance to Education, Science, and Culture
When the mind is thinking, is it simply talking to itself, asking questions and answering them, and saying yes or no. - Socrates quote.
When the mind is thinking, is it simply talking to itself, asking questions and answering them, and saying yes or no.
There's nothing wrong with standing back and thinking.  To paraphrase several sages: "Nobody can think and hit at the same time." - Susan Sontag quote.
There's nothing wrong with standing back and thinking.  To paraphrase several sages: "Nobody can think and hit at the same time."
Ultimately, no one can ever be greater than the quality of his or her thinking.
Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake. - Henri-Frédéric Amiel quote.
Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake.
The surprises of thought are like those of love: they wear out.  But here too you can carry on for a long time doing your conjugal duty. - Jean Baudrillard quote.
The surprises of thought are like those of love: they wear out.  But here too you can carry on for a long time doing your conjugal duty.
The revelation of Thought takes man out of servitude into Freedom. - Ralph Waldo Emerson quote.
The revelation of Thought takes man out of servitude into Freedom.
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take firm root in our personal experience. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quote.
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take firm root in our personal experience.

thoughts

Thought is the labor of the intellect. - Victor Hugo quote.
Thought is the labor of the intellect.
Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again. - Zora Neale Hurston quote.
Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not possibly have met.
What generally passes for "thought" among the majority of mankind is the time one takes out to rearrange one's prejudices. - Clare Booth Luce quote.
What generally passes for "thought" among the majority of mankind is the time one takes out to rearrange one's prejudices.
By thought I comprehend the world. - Blaise Pascal quote.
By thought I comprehend the world.
Travel and idle, contemplate the future or the past of the world, dream over books and loiter at street corners, and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. - Virginia Woolf quote.
Travel and idle, contemplate the future or the past of the world, dream over books and loiter at street corners, and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.
He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger. - Confucius quote.
He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.
Learning without thinking is time wasted; Thinking without learning is dangerous. - Confucius quote.
Learning without thinking is time wasted; Thinking without learning is dangerous.

learning

Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous. - Confucius quote.
Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.

learning

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking. - Jean-Paul Sartre quote.
My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

awareness

To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power. - Ayn Rand quote.
To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.