Quotes about thinking
552 quotes from 279 people
Aeschylus525–456 BCFragment 392 (220 Smyth), from an unidentified play. Included in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Twilight of the Idols (1889), “Maxims and Arrows,” § 1.34
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), Wednesday
William Hazlitt1778–1830The Plain Speaker (1826)
Thomas Aquinas1225–1274Opuscule II, De Regno (On Kingship, c. 1267)
Graham Greene1904–1991“Freedom of Thought,” speech accepting the Jerusalem Prize (6 April 1981)
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882The American Scholar (1837), par. 20
Albert Camus1913–1960Notebooks (1942–1951)
Winston Churchill1874–1965Speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943 (full text, audio).
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Endymion (1880), Ch. 85.The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 382, trans. StoppIt is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.
Anatole France1844–1924Le livre de mon ami (1885): Le livre de Pierre, part I, ch. II: La dame en blancTo Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914Epigrams, p. 343We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
Albert Camus1913–1960An Absurd Reasoning
