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Quotes about thinking

552 quotes from 279 people

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A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), #32
- Intelligence
Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
William Blake1757–1827Proverbs of Hell, Line 66
- Genius
There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.
André Gide1869–1951“An Unprejudiced Mind,” p. 317
- Emotion
In any case, we do not advance the human cause by refusing to consider ideas that make us frightened.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Broca’s Brain (1979), Chapter 25, “The Amniotic Universe” (p. 364)
- Fear
- Ideas
Most men make little other use of their Speech than to give evidence against their own Understanding.
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax1633–1695Moral Thoughts and Reflections
- Intelligence
- Talking
The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
- Genius
Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
Carl von Clausewitz1780–1831On War (1832), Book 1, Ch. 1
- Intelligence
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda
- Freedom
What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.
William Blake1757–1827Letter to Revd. Dr. Trusler (1799)
- Intelligence
It seems to me that in many ways, ideas have a life of their own. They appear to seize on people and make use of them.
Philip K. Dick1928–1982“Philip K Dick speech (interpreter edited out) in Metz, France, 1977”, ~28:00
- Ideas
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
Laurence J. Peter1919–1990Entry for September 24; as quoted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, , p. 78
- Decisions
- Intelligence
Genius is the aptitude for seeing invisible things, for stirring intangible things, for painting things that have no features.
Joseph Joubert1754–1824The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, tr. Paul Auster (1983)
- Genius
He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Human, All Too Human (1878), Aphorism 579, tr. R. J. Hollingdale
- Politics
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 2: Dreams and Facts
It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.
H. P. Lovecraft1890–1937“The Temple”—Written 1920; first published in Weird Tales, 6 No. 3 (September 1925)
- Anti-Religion