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Quotes about thinking

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The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
Archibald MacLeish1892–1982“In Praise of Dissent”, New York Times (16 December 1956)
If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951On Certainty (1969), 115
True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest.
André Gide1869–1951“An Unprejudiced Mind,” pp. 311-312
- Intelligence
It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.
Henri Poincaré1854–1912Science and Method (1908), Part II. Ch. 2: Mathematical Definitions and Education, p. 129
- Science
Concepts, like individuals, have their histories, and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals.
Søren Kierkegaard1813–1855On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841)
- Ideas
- Time
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 Dewey1859–1952Experience and Nature (1925), Ch. VI: Nature, Mind and the Subject
An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.
Charles Bukowski1920–1994Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)
- Art
- Intelligence
A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.
Albert Einstein1879–1955Letter to Dr. H. L. Gordon (May 3, 1949—AEA 58-217) as quoted in Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007) by Walter Isaacson
- Experience
- Ideas
Toleration … is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
Helen Keller1880–1968The Story of My Life (1903), Part III, Ch. 2: Personality
The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988Revolt in 2100 (1953), postscript
Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956“The Divine Afflatus” in New York Evening Mail (16 November 1917)
- Ideas
To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit — General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess.
William Blake1757–1827Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, pp. xvii–xcviii (c. 1798–1809)
- Intelligence
- Knowledge
There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man⁠—but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 41e
- Genius
Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere.
Isaac Asimov1920–1992Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 12 “Agent” section 4, p. 226
No Man is so much a Fool as not to have Wit enough sometimes to be a Knave; nor any so cunning a Knave, as not to have the Weakness sometimes to play the Fool.
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax1633–1695Moral Thoughts and Reflections
- Character
- Intelligence